In The News

Teens, K-Pop Stans Claim Trump Rally Tickets: NYT

Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning and Sheera Frenkel June 22, 2020
Teenagers and K-pop fans claim they signed up for a million ticket requests to attend US President Donald Trump’s first post-pandemic rally. The Trump campaign planned for overflow crowds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city with rising numbers of Covid-19 cases, but the stadium was about two-thirds empty. “TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of...

Automatic Deletes for Chinese Communist Party: CNBC

Sam Shead June 2, 2020
Social media platforms are highly automated, and when errors occur, fixes can take months – unless a high-profile user complains. For months, YouTube’s automated comment filters were set to delete comments containing Chinese phrases, “communist bandit” and “50-cent party” – phrases mostly linked to criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, though the platform deleted positive comments using those...

Apple, Google Crack Down on COVID-19 Apps: CNBC

Kif Leswing March 7, 2020
Major platforms like Apple and Google are restricting apps on the COVID-19 to those produced or approved by recognized governments and hospitals. “Four independent developers told CNBC that Apple rejected their apps, which would allow people to see stats about which countries have confirmed cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus,” reports Kif Leswing for CNBC. “Some of these apps used public data from...

Student Builds COVID-19 Tracking Website: GeekWire

Kurt Schlosser March 5, 2020
A new coronavirus for China emerged in early January, and a 17-year-old student in Mercer Island, Washington, worried about misinformation. Before the disease spread from China, Avi Schiffmann set out make a one-stop website that compiles official data. “The site’s simple homepage consists of quick facts that are updated every 10 minutes, including total confirmed cases, total deaths, countries...

Millions of Websites Face “Insecure” Warnings: BBC

Jane Wakefield March 4, 2020
Internet users value security. The internet security research group and Let's Encrypt issue certificates to internet websites assuring about security, but the organizations warn that 3 million will be revoked due to a flaw in the certificates’ security code, resulting in sites carry security warnings. Google has used the https ranking signal since 2014. “Digital certificates are basically...

EU Proposes Big Tech Data-Sharing: Financial Times

Javier Espinoza, Madhumita Murgia and Richard Waters February 20, 2020
The European Commission wants the world’s top tech companies – Amazon, Facebook, Google and others to follow the lead of financial services firms by sharing data with small firms. The commission released a “European Strategy for Data,” and proposes compulsory data-sharing in areas with market failure. “The commission said that tech companies were able to build huge advantages by guarding their...

UN Urges Probe of Alleged Saudi Hacking: NPR

Avie Schneider and Shannon Bond January 22, 2020
The United Nations has urged a probe after an investigation pointed to a 2018 WhatsApp message, sent by an account of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to the CEO of Amazon that when opened allowed exposed contents of the phone. The target, Jeff Bezos, commissioned the investigation and report, reviewed by UN human rights experts. “The forensic analysis assessed that the intrusion likely was...