Techmeme
July 2, 2020, 5:30 PM

Top News

Joseph Cox / VICE:
Police infiltrated Encrochat, an encrypted phone network used by organized crime, and read millions of messages for months, leading to international arrests  —  Police monitored a hundred million encrypted messages sent through Encrochat, a network used by career criminals to discuss drug deals, murders, and extortion plots.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Facebook says it continued sharing data of inactive users with around 5,000 developers even after their apps' 90-day cut-off date expired; issue is now fixed  —  A Facebook privacy mechanism blocks apps from receiving user data if users didn't use an app for 90 days.
Daniel Kuhn / CoinDesk:
Researchers expose a flaw in at least three major crypto wallets, Ledger Live, Edge, and Breadwallet, which could be exploited for double-spending users' funds  —  A standard way to transact Bitcoin could be vulnerable to double-spending, new research has found.
Nick Miroff / Washington Post:
CBP awards Anduril, founded by Palantir veterans and Palmer Luckey, a five-year contract to build a “virtual border wall” using mobile surveillance towers  —  The Trump administration has awarded a major border security contract to a California technology start …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it is shutting down Lasso, its TikTok clone launched a year and a half ago, on July 10  —  Facebook is no longer betting on Lasso, an app it launched a year and a half ago, to take on TikTok .  The social juggernaut's TikTok clone is shutting down on July 10, Facebook said.
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sources: Zuckerberg told staff Facebook won't change policies because of “threat to a small percent of our revenue”, expects advertisers to return “soon enough”  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees he was reluctant to bow to the threats of a growing ad boycott …
Reuters:
CNN:
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
An African American manager and two job applicants filed a complaint against Facebook with the EEOC, alleging a culture of bias against Black workers  —  An African American manager at Facebook and two rejected job applicants are suing the company, alleging a culture of bias in promotions, evaluations, hiring and recruiting.
More: Gizmodo, Axios, and Bloomberg
Louise Matsakis / Wired:
A look at “Prison TikTok”, a subgenre where inmates use contraband cellphones to share dance videos, funny skits, and broadcast their living conditions  —  The lives of incarcerated people are usually hidden from society.  On prison TikTok, they're going viral.
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
EU is examining whether Google's proposed acquisition of Fitbit will give the company more data to help it entrench its search engine and advertising businesses  —  Lengthy questionnaires to rivals come as consumer groups warn the deal will extend Google's data empire
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Microsoft is using ransomware-like tactics to force-feed its new Chromium Edge browser to users through an automatic Windows update  —  It undermines Microsoft's own argument that automatic updates are critical  —  If I told you that my entire computer screen just got taken over by a new app …
Paul Ziobro / Wall Street Journal:
A mystery shopper who irked online merchants by abandoning thousands of shopping carts carrying only one item was a Google bot scraping pricing information  —  Merchants have seen a lot of browsing by John Smith, who picks up items, then leaves without buying; ‘it started getting out of hand’
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
As part of UK antitrust investigation of Google, the CMA says Safari's use of Google as its default search engine is “a significant barrier to entry” for rivals  —  (Reuters) - The payments by Alphabet Inc's Google to Apple Inc to be the default search engine on Apple's Safari web browser create …
Nick Summers / Engadget:

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Sara Fischer / Axios:
Joseph Tsidulko / CRN:
David Ruddock / Android Police:
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider: