Iiiiiiiit's Tuesday! You know what that means: Another edition of Tuesday Newsday™. This week, we've got a five-course meal waiting for you to feast your eyes upon as you satisfy your appetite for news you might have missed.
Let's start things off with everyone's preferred method of punishing corporations when they break the law: fines. Corporations actually call this cost of doing business, but we laypeople aren't supposed to know that.
- The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined TikTok €345 million for breaking EU data law.
The charges include failing to shield underage users' content from public view by placing their accounts on "public settings" by default. The DPC also found that TikTok did not verify the identity of adults paired with children's accounts through their "family pairing" scheme.
Slightly surprising coming from a Chinese company; that sort of predatory behavior towards children usually comes from gaming companies... Looking at you Epic Games.
- Google is set to pay $93 million in settlement money over deceptive location tracking
The lawsuit against Google concluded that the company misrepresented its handling of user location data. In theory, users have the option to turn off location history and are explicitly told that such data would no longer be tracked; meanwhile, Google continued to obviously do so. For a company that made roughly $280 billion in revenue last year, $93 million is the equivalent of chucking a few pennies at the poor, manipulated users and calling it a day.
- MGM Resorts in Vegas are hit with a massive cyber-attack
For several days, the resort conglomerate had to shut down most of its internal network, resulting in numerous disruptions. Guests were unable to use their digital key cards or pay by card, and ATMs and slot machines were out of order. A hacking group going by the name "Scattered Spider" has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Using big-brain bamboozle tactics, they were allegedly able to gain access by identifying the name of an employee on LinkedIn, and then calling the help desk and impersonating the employee to gain access to their systems.
Learn more about the history of ransomware on our blog, then read on for three hilarious hacking stunts.
- NOYB, a European Digital Rights non-profit, has filed official complaints against 3 French Companies.
While the complaint is not as severe as a lawsuit, it's the first step in identifying illegal behaviors and could conceivably lead to fines or punishments should the allegations be proven in court. The complaint states that "the companies' apps illegally access and share users' personal data with third parties for sophisticated analytics as soon as the apps are opened. Users don't even have the choice to consent to or prevent the sharing of their data."
The open-source software company is mainly known for SUSE Linux Enterprise and its sponsorship of openSUSE. The sale will see the company be de-listed from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and will be merged into an unlisted Luxembourg-based entity.
2023 is the year that keeps on giving, and this week was no exception to that rule:
- Social engineering ain't dead
- Fines for tech companies are incredibly ineffective
- Your favorite app is probably data-mining
Don't forget that your mere existence online provides an infinite source of data to be exploited. Having a Windscribe connection activated is part of a comprehensive data-protection plan.
If you don't have Windscribe already, it's never too late to join our tribe: Sign up today!
