THEHACKCITY

Meta is proposing a significant change to its personalized, targeted ads in the European Union, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The company aims to make these ads an up-front opt-in choice for EU users, allowing them to decide whether they want to allow Meta to target ads based on their activities within the social media services. If the EU accepts Meta's proposal, users would have a three-month or longer window to make this decision. This move is an attempt by Meta to resolve its ongoing conflict with the EU regarding the use of personal data for advertisements under European privacy laws. Currently, EU users of Meta's platforms can opt out of targeted ads, rather than having the option to opt in. For those who choose to opt out, the company still targets ads using broader demographic data like general location and age range. The specifics of Meta's new proposal are yet to be disclosed, so it remains uncertain if generalized targeting will still be allowe...

The BBC, one of the leading news outlets, has taken a significant step by launching its own "experimental" Mastodon server. This move positions the BBC as one of the first major media organizations to join the Twitter alternative. The server, accessible at social.bbc, showcases posts from various BBC accounts, including BBC Radio 4, BBC Taster, BBC Research & Development, and more. Although the BBC plans to test the server for six months before making a final decision on its continuation, it marks an exciting venture into the world of decentralised social networking. Discovering the BBC's Mastodon Server Unlike traditional social media platforms, the BBC's Mastodon server does not allow users to create accounts or posts directly on the instance. Instead, users can interact with the server by leaving replies from their existing instances and following the BBC's accounts. This approach offers a unique experience for users who can engage with the BBC's conten...

In a series of noteworthy updates, Twitter, the popular social media platform, has officially rebranded itself to a single-letter name "X" on the App Store, marking a significant change in its visual identity. This move came after weeks of alterations to its social media handles, interface branding, and even web redirects, generating quite a buzz among its users and followers. Interestingly, Apple usually maintains a policy against allowing developers to name their apps with just a single character. However, it seems that Twitter's parent company, X Corp., led by the renowned entrepreneur Elon Musk, managed to secure an exception from Apple, granting them the unique opportunity to use "X" as the app's name. This exception was particularly significant, as the App Store Connect portal typically displays an error when developers attempt to use a single character as the app's name. In conjunction with the name change, Twitter also revamped its App Store tagl...

Identity and authentication company Okta has revealed that it is dealing with another significant security incident after a hacker accessed its source code following a breach of its GitHub repositories. The company said in a statement that it had received notification from GitHub about “suspicious access” to its code repositories earlier this month, and that the hackers had used this access to copy code repositories related to Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC), its enterprise security solution. Okta added that there had been no unauthorized access to its service or customer data, and that products related to Auth0, which it acquired in 2021, were not impacted. Okta did not disclose how the hackers had gained access to its private repositories. According to a confidential email notification sent by Okta internally and seen by BleepingComputer, GitHub notified the San Francisco-based company of suspicious activity in its code repositories in December 2022. Okta’s internal email a...

The most-watched sporting event of the year – the 2022 FIFA World Cup – kicks off on Sunday, November 20, with host nation Qatar taking on Ecuador in the first match. This year’s FIFA World Cup is expected to be watched by 5 billion people worldwide. Here’s how you can stream the 2022 World Cup: What you need to know about watching the 2022 FIFA World Cup (U.S. viewers) The 64 matches will be livestreamed on FOX and FS1 in the U.S. Streaming services that carry FS1 and local FOX stations include Hulu Live TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV STREAM, FuboTV, Sling TV, and Vidgo. FOX Sports’ app also offers live and on-demand streaming of all games. Tubi, Fox’s ad-supported streaming service, will only offer World Cup games on-demand once the matches are finished–which will be available once the matches are done. For Spanish-speaking viewers, NBCUniversal’s Peacock live streaming service will offer live Spanish-language coverage of all World Cup matches. The f...

PayPal is suspending its services in Russia in response to the country’s “violent military aggression in Ukraine,” according to a report from  Reuters . Ukraine’s vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov  tweeted out  a letter from PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, confirming the company’s decision to shut down its operations in Russia. “Under the current circumstances, we are suspending PayPal services in Russia,” Shulman says in the letter. “We are also doing all that we can to support our staff in the region during this deeply difficult time.” As  Reuters  notes, PayPal had been available in Russia for cross-border payments only. It  stopped accepting new Russian users  earlier this week but has now made the sweeping decision to halt its services altogether — a measure that also includes the PayPal-owned money transfer service, Xoom. PayPal spokesperson Aidan Kelly told  The Verge  that PayPal will still “continue work to process customer withdraws for a period of ti...

WhatsApp Banned More Than 2 Million Accounts In India in a month, WhatsApp has confirmed that as many 2 million user accounts in India were banned on the instant messaging platform between 15th May and 15th June. This comes as part of the India’s Monthly Report under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The company revealed that it had banned 20,11,000 accounts in this one-month period. WhatsApp identifies Indian accounts via the country code +91 of the mobile phone number used to register. It also added that India alone accounts for 25 percent of all banned accounts in the world. The company identifies an Indian account via +91 phone number. Stating that more than 95% of such bans are due to the unauthorized use of automated or bulk messaging, the company added that these numbers have increased significantly since 2019 because its systems have increased in sophistication, and hence are detecting more accounts even as it b...

Apple preventing Chinese apps new user tracking method. Social media network TikTok tried to bypass Apple’s App Tracking Transparency measures, in coordination with some other Chinese tech companies, but Apple called their bluff. In the belief that Apple wouldn’t be able to block their apps, particularly in the Chinese region, apps including TikTok and QQ attempted to make the switch to Chinese Advertising ID, or CAID, to circumvent App Tracking Transparency measures that give iPhone users control over which apps can track their usage across the internet, and which can’t. The belief stemmed from the confidence that Apple wouldn’t be able to ban apps incredibly popular in China. Apple did exactly that, by blocking updates for apps enlisting CAID, from the App Store. The Financial Times reports that Chinese tech companies including Baidu, Tencent and Bytedance have been working to create a new way of tracking iPhone users, for the purposes of advertising. What is CAID ? The state-backed ...

Amazon Web Services Inc. said that it has acquired a startup called Wickr Inc. with an encrypted messaging app used by large enterprises and public sector organizations. AWS didn’t disclose how much it’s paying for the startup. San Francisco-based Wickr previously raised more than $50 million from investors. Amazon said in a statement it would incorporate Wickr in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division which offers cloud computing and other services. AWS will continue to offer Wickr services including end-to-end encrypted communications which meet certain regulatory requirements. Wickr’s encrypted messaging app of the same name is in use at organizations such as the U.S. Department of Defense, publicly traded financial firm Discover Financial Services and McKinsey & Co. The app uses end-to-end encryption technology to scramble messages, as well as their file attachments, in a way that makes it impossible even for Wickr itself to view their content. Every message is encrypted on the...

New LinkedIn data leak exposed details of 92% of users. Professional networking platform LinkedIn has denied reports of a data breach that allegedly compromised the data of more than 700 million users. “Our teams have investigated a set of alleged LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale. We want to be clear that this is not a data breach and no private LinkedIn member data was exposed,” the company said in a note posted on its website. Our initial investigation has found that this data was scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites and includes the same data reported earlier this year in our April 2021 scraping update.” The data was obtained by a hacker who exploited the official LinkedIn API. The hacker is currently selling the information online and posted a sample of the data on June 22, containing the information of 1 million users. The leaked user data includes email address, full name, phone numbers, physical address, geolocation, user name, profile URL, gender, so...

Nigeria said on Monday it was in discussions with Twitter after it suspended the US social media giant’s services in the country, branding its use as “unpatriotic”. The Twitter suspension has provoked an outcry from the international community and rights groups who denounced it as a threat to freedom of expression in Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria announces talks with Twitter after ban, as Ecowas court bars government crackdown on users, Nigeria said it was halting the platform’s operations indefinitely on Friday, two days after Twitter deleted a comment from President Muhammadu Buhari’s account referring to civil unrest that the firm said violated its rules.  “There are discussions ongoing with Twitter, we will see how that progresses, so I cannot say for now the duration of the suspension,” Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama said after a meeting with diplomats on the issue. “There are conversations, yes, with our partn...

Google Delays Privacy Sandbox Initiatives, Continues Support for 3rd Party Cookies. Google announced that support for third-party cookies would be extended until late 2023, giving marketers more than a year extension from the previous plan to block third-party cookies by 2022. The Privacy Sandbox initiatives will be delayed while more testing takes place. Google said Thursday it’s pushing back its plan to kill off third-party tracking cookies in Chrome. It now expects to phase out cookies and replace them with tech from its Privacy Sandbox by 2023. The delay comes after Google pledged to give oversight of the cookie changes to the UK’s antitrust watchdog. “While there’s considerable progress with this initiative, it’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right,” Chrome’s Privacy Engineering Director, Vinay Goel,  said  Thursday. Google first announced its intentions to kill off the tracking c...