TechPagger

Facebook said on Thursday it had removed 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, groups and events linked to Israel due to what it called "inauthentic behaviour" targeting users in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. The move is part of wider efforts by  Facebook  to address concerns over privacy lapses and hate speech in social media. Facebook said the "inauthentic" activity originated in Israel and focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia. "The people behind this network used fake accounts to run pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement," Nathaniel, head of cyber-security policy at Facebook  said in a statement . He identified Israel's Archimedes Group as the source of some of the activity. "This organisation and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter," said Gl...

Google released a security advisory on Monday that says a security bug exists in the company's Bluetooth Titan Security Key. The flaw could potentially enable someone to gain access to a user's account or device while remaining in close physical proximity. The tech giant claims this is a result of a 'misconfiguration' in the keys' Bluetooth pairing protocols, however, the keys are still great at protecting users against phishing attacks. Google will  offer  a free replacement key to all existing users. The issue is limited to the Titan Bluetooth keys which means if you're using the Titan USB keys, you shouldn't be worried. Google sells its Titan Bluetooth keys for $50 (roughly Rs. 3,500). To recall, Google's  Titan Security Keys  for two-factor authentication had been  launched in August  last year. The company further explained in its security advisory that an attacker will need to be within Bluetooth range (around 30 feet) to exploit the securi...

Scientists on Wednesday said they could be a step closer to solving the riddle behind the Moon's formation, unveiling the most detailed survey yet of the far side of Earth's satellite.  In January, the Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-4 - named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology - became the first ever craft to touch down on the far side of the lunar surface.  Similar to other bodies in our Solar System, the Moon is believed to have gone through a phase during its formation when it was partially or entirely composed of molten rock.   As it cooled, so the hypothesis goes, denser minerals sank to the bottom of the magma-ocean, while lighter materials gathered near the surface to form its mantle. The team landed its probe in the Von Karmen Crater in the Aitken Basin at the Moon's South Pole -- home to one of the largest impact craters known in the Solar System.  They detected materials such as olivine and low-calcium pyroxene that are rare elsewhere on the...

Over the years, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been introducing a series of initiatives to drive financial inclusion penetration in the country. Examples of such initiatives include the Shared Agent Network Facility (SANEF) and  Payment Services Banks , both of which were introduced within the last two years. Both MTN Nigerian and  Airtel Nigeria  have since indicated interest in the PSB model after CBN released the guidelines for its licensing and regulation. However, it appears that MTN is not going after the PSB licence alone. According to  Rob Shuter , the CEO of the South African telecommunications group, the company has gotten approval-in-principle for a super-agent licence in Nigeria. With the super-agent licence, the telco can re-purpose its network of agents, that sell prepaid airtime, to also offer cash-in-cash-out financial services. MTN will be rolling out the super-agency model on a test basis while its commercial launch is expected to be ...

Everyone with WhatsApp on their phone should update to the latest version of the app as soon as possible, the company said on Tuesday. The WhatsApp vulnerability found is a so-called “zero-click zero-day,” a previously undiscovered vulnerability that can infect a target’s phone with no action from the victim. The best course of action for users is to make sure auto-update is on for either your iPhone or Android devices. Check out this article to find out more reason you should update WhatsApp

Lenovo has unveiled a preview of its upcoming foldable laptop in the Thinkpad X1 series, what it is calling the "world's first foldable PC". The company has shared photos of a prototype, and says that it is slated for release in 2020. Separately, the company has also launched its new ThinkBook lineup, meant for SMBs. The ThinkBook lineup is being introduced with the ThinkBook S series, featuring the ThinkBook 13s and ThinkBook 14s models that offer an ultra-slim design, touch fingerprint reader, physical ThinkShutter camera cover for privacy control, premium full-HD displays, spill resistant keyboards, and up to 11 hours of battery life. Starting with the foldable laptop, the company  previewed  the new design at Accelerate, and says that the prototype is not of a phone or tablet, or a hybrid, but of a full-fledged laptop with a foldable screen. The photos reveal that the PC folds out into a larger two-sided display, with one side working as a touchscreen keyboard. Th...

There are currently quite a number of messaging services, a handful of them from Google itself, but few have withstood the test of time and of the market. WhatsApp, even before its acquisition by Facebook, was already making waves but its popularity and notoriety rose after being snatched up by the social networking giant. It prided itself for its end-to-end encryption, one of the few mainstream platforms to advertise such a feature, but that turned out to be pretty useless if a vulnerability allowed certain actors to inject spyware into phones by simply ringing up the phone. Making phone calls to trigger invasive bugs seems to be the trend these days. At the beginning of the year, Apple was hit by a rather  scandalous Group FaceTime bug that let another party spy on the user via audio even when they don’t take the call. Then just last month, Skype for Android would  automatically answer calls  before you can even reject them, a bug in its auto-answering feature....

Spotify  has brought a lighter version of its app to India that is built for low-end Android smartphones. After successful tests in markets including Indonesia,  Philippines ,  Malaysia ,  Mexico , and  Brazil , the 10MB-sized app that has similar look and feel to the main app is now available in beta for users in India. It uses less storage, making it an ideal option for older phones with limited capacity, the Swedish music streaming platform claims. "When  Spotify  launched in India two months ago, we had committed to localising the app so that more and more people can listen to music... Spotify Lite Beta is a step in that direction as it enables users to play millions of songs for free, takes up less space on phones, and saves data when used on the go," Amarjit Batra, Managing Director India, Spotify, told IANS on Monday. The lighter app can be downloaded separately and can be used either alongside or independently from the main Spotify app. It is...

Employees from e-commerce giant Amazon have been "mistakenly" taking down ads with religious content that has negatively affected the sale of products from some small sellers. Multiple sellers have seen their product ads getting suspended in recent months for having religious content. These sellers were told through email that their ads were getting blocked due to a "new policy update" at  Amazon  which bans any ad that contains "religious content", CNBC  reported  on Saturday. Amazon said the company will train it's employee on contents that are acceptable.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has rejected the call for breaking up his company, saying the size of Facebook was actually a benefit to its users and for the security of the democratic process. In an interview with French broadcaster France 2,  Zuckerberg  dismissed the  claim made by his long-time friend and  Facebook  co-founder Chris Hughes that it is time to break up Facebook as Zuckerberg has yielded "unchecked power and influence" far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in the government. "When I read what he wrote, my main reaction was that what he's proposing that we do isn't going to do anything to help solve those issues. "So I think that if what you care about is democracy and elections, then you want a company like us to be able to invest billions of dollars per year like we are in building up really advanced tools to fight election interference," Zuckerberg told France 2 while in Paris to meet with French Preside...