Tag: Tech
Venmo Is Ending The Public Feed. It Still Needs One More Privacy Fix.
Sopa Images / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Venmo, PayPal’s mobile payments app, announced on Tuesday that it is ending the global view — the feed where you could see transactions not just between your friends, but those between complete strangers. The global view was accessed via a globe icon…
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A Government Watchdog May Have Missed Clearview AI Use By Five Federal Agencies In A New Report
BuzzFeed News; Alamy; Getty Images A government inquiry into federal agencies’ deployment of facial recognition may have overlooked some organizations’ use of popular biometric identification software Clearview AI, calling into question whether authorities can understand the extent to which the emerging technology has been used by taxpayer-funded entities. In a…
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Snapchat Removed Its Controversial Speed Filter That Was Linked To Fatal Car Crashes
Snapchat has begun removing its “speed filter” feature after it was blamed for encouraging dangerous speeding by safety advocates and families of car crash victims. It’s not clear when Snap Inc. made the decision to remove the feature that records speed in real time, but NPR first reported the news…
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A New Law Would Restrict The Use Of “Stingrays,” The Ultimate Surveillance Tool
Democrats Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Rep. Ted Lieu of California are introducing a bill on Thursday that would restrict the use of “stingray” cell site simulators, powerful surveillance devices capable of intercepting calls, texts, and other information sent to cell phones and determining their current location. Dubbed the…
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The Nigerian Government Banned Its Citizens From Using Twitter, And The Consequences Are Steep
Alvaro Dominguez for BuzzFeed News On the morning of June 5, 23-year-old Farida Garba* opened her Twitter app to discover that she, like 39 million other Nigerian Twitter users, was unable to access the platform. “Tweets were no longer loading, and it took me an hour to figure 0ut what…
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If You Have Venmo, Do This Now: Make Friends Private
Sure, you can set transactions to “private,” but you could never hide certain details about your account like your friends list. This was just one of a bunch of really weak privacy features on Venmo. The fact that there was no way to hide your account or have a private…
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