Tech Digest daily round up: Twitter trials misinformation reporting
Twitter is introducing a new feature on a trial basis to test the ability for users to report misleading posts. The move follows a wave of criticism of social media companies for facilitating the spread of misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Twitter currently allows users to report posts, the subsequent pop-up doesn’t contain a field allowing users to report posts for misinformation. The company says the test feature will be available to some users in Australia, South Korea and the United States from this week. It will add an “It’s misleading” option to the fields that appear when users attempt to report posts. Sky News
A woman accessed her ex-boyfriend’s smart speaker from her home 100 miles away to tell his new girlfriend to leave, a court has heard. Phillipa Copleston-Warren accessed an Alexa app linked to devices, including cameras, lights and his Amazon Echo speaker at his home in Lincolnshire. She also admitted at Isleworth Crown Court posting a naked photo of her ex-boyfriend on Facebook. The 46-year-old from London will be sentenced on 6 October. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said accessing her ex-partner’s devices allowed her to see the victim’s new girlfriend in the house she had previously stayed at. She used the app remotely to speak to her and tell her to get out. She then used it to turn the bedside table light on and off before posting the nude image on social media, captioned: “Do I look fat??? My daily question”. BBC
Samsung says it will cut down on the ads it shows on its smartphones. The announcement was first reported by Korean news agency Yonhap and was later confirmed by Samsung in a statement to The Verge. The official line from the industry giant is “Samsung has made a decision to cease the advertisement on proprietary apps, including Samsung Weather, Samsung Pay, and Samsung Theme.” The company added, “The update will be ready by later this year.” Samsung ships Android on all its smartphones, but it changes the experience with a “One UI” skin and includes several Samsung-developed packed-in apps. Many of these apps—like Bixby, Samsung Health, and Weather—contain big banner ads, sometimes right at the top of the app, where you would normally expect to find an app logo or navigation information. Ars Technica
The Chinese government has made investments in two of the nation’s most significant technology firms — ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns global video app TikTok, and Weibo, China’s version of Twitter — in a move apparently intended to bolster its sway over the nation’s flourishing technology sector. In April, ByteDance sold a 1% stake in its Chinese subsidiary, Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., to WangTouZhongWen (Beijing) Technology, a state-backed firm, according to public government records and the corporate information platform Qichacha. WangTouZhongWen is owned by three Chinese state entities, one of which is linked to a fund backed by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the nation’s internet watchdog, according to government records and Qichacha data. AP News
A security breach against T-Mobile has exposed personal information, including social security numbers (SSN) and pins in some cases, of more than 40 million users, the company said in a statement on Wednesday morning. The same data for about 7.8 million current T-Mobile post-paid customers appears to be compromised. No phone numbers, account numbers, pins, passwords or financial information from the nearly 50m records and accounts were compromised, it said. T-Mobile also confirmed that approximately 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account pins were exposed. The company said that it proactively reset all of the pins on those accounts. No Metro by T-Mobile, formerly Sprint prepaid, or Boost customers had their names or pins exposed. Guardian
