James Farrell
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Carriers are still selling your location data, says new report
Bounty hunters and other sketchy figures have been buying people’s location data, according to a report published today by Motherboard. The report said data from companies such as AT&T Inc. and Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. are ending up in the wrong hands, and all for a small price. During the investigation the journalist ...
U.S court rules politician cannot block critic on social media
A federal appeals court Monday said that when a U.S. politician blocked one of her constituent’s on Facebook, she violated the First Amendment. The court decided 3-0 that the chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Phyllis Randall, violated the rights of Brian Davison because she banned him from her “Chair Phyllis J. Randall” ...
Screen time may not be that bad for kids, British doctors say
A lot of time spent looking at smartphone screens might not be too bad for kids if they have healthy lifestyles already, according to some leading British children’s doctors. The Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, an organization that trains people working in child medicine, produced a guidance report for under-18s last week that said ...
Netflix snaps up former Activision Blizzard CFO Spencer Neumann
Netflix Inc. today confirmed it’s hiring former Activision Blizzard Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann as its new CFO. Neumann was jobless only two days, after being let go by the video game company, but apparently, his release was not related to the company’s financial performance. In an announcement Tuesday, Activision said that Neumann “was terminated ...
The internet is a ‘lawless abyss’: Scarlett Johansson on ‘deep-fake’ pornography
Actress Scarlett Johansson called the internet a “lawless abyss” in an interview with the Washington Post over the weekend about the proliferation of deep-fake pornography. Said to be the highest-paid female actress in Hollywood, Johansson (pictured) talked about the difficulty of fighting against people superimposing stars’ faces into porn scenes, something of which she has been ...
Facebook’s moderation rulebook has issues, according to report
Facebook Inc.’s almost Sisyphean task of moderating billions of posts cannot be easy, but the company could be doing a better job, according to a New York Times expose Thursday. The Times managed to get hold of 1,400 pages from a rulebook Facebook uses to moderate the platform, which were given to the newspaper by a disgruntled employee ...
After Gatwick Airport fiasco, UK gets new drone detection systems
Drone detection systems are currently being deployed throughout the U.K. following rogue drone invasions over a major airport that halted flights last week. About 1,000 flights were affected by “drone intrusions” leading to 140,000 passengers having their flight cancelled or diverted, causing chaos at the U.K.’s second largest airport over a three-day period. At the ...
US sanctions prompt Slack to close accounts of people who visited certain countries
Updated: Slack Technologies Inc. has started banning accounts with links to Iran and other nations, according to reports Thursday. Some of the reports said users with hardly any remaining ties to Iran, living as far and wide as Finland and Canada, as well as the United States, had woken up to see their Slack accounts deactivated. The ...
DC attorney general sues Facebook over Cambridge Analytica leak
The attorney general of the District of Columbia today sued Facebook Inc. for not protecting user privacy during the scandal involving the campaign data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica. “Facebook failed to protect the privacy of its users and deceived them about who had access to their data and how it was used,” said Karl Racine. “Facebook put ...
NAACP calls for Facebook boycott after report reveals Russian government targeted African-Americans
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has asked people to boycott Facebook for a week following reports that the platform had been used by Russian agents to try to sway the minds of America’s black voters. Two reports released Monday showed how millions of posts from fake Russian accounts ended up on ...