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:

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
Celebrate and collaborate this holiday season with Zoho Cliq  —  The holiday season is a time for celebration, relaxation, and reflection.  While some people are busy wrapping presents for their loved ones …
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 12/23 - The Revenge Of Google Glass?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:30 PM ET, July 2, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

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