John Lister

Google has lost a major court battle with respect to the way people pay for mobile app services. It's a surprise verdict as Apple prevailed in an extremely similar case against the same opponent. Both cases involved antitrust cases brought by Epic ... Games, which makes the hugely popular game Fortnite. In both cases, Epic complained about the way Apple and Google take a cut of payments from app developers. In this case, Epic said Google's cut of 30 percent for apps in the official Play Store was too high. It said Google was able to set the rate because of a lack of alternative routes to ... (view more)

Google has removed more than a dozen Android apps which offered loans to desperate users, but were actually a scam involving fraud and blackmail. As usual with such removals, it only affects the Play Store and the apps are not automatically deleted ... from phones. The 18 apps in question have been collectively dubbed SpyLoan, and have more than 12 million combined downloads from Google Play this year. They were listed in a variety of language with English variants including Cashwow, 4S Cash and EasyCash. The main target audience appears to be people in countries with a large population and a ... (view more)

Google says it has significantly upgraded Gmail's spam filter to overcome a common scam tactic. It's now using AI to detect images that aren't technically text characters but are still readable by humans. It also says the new system will reduce the ... number of false positives: legitimate emails mistakenly flagged as spam. That's certainly felt like an increasing problem over the past year or so. The scammer tactic tackled with the update is called adversarial text manipulation. That takes account of the fact that a key part of spam filtering involves analyzing the text in an email and looking ... (view more)

Tougher rules mean digital device and software manufacturers will have to report security breaches more quickly. They'll also have to offer security patches for at least five years. The rules come from the European Union. They technically only cover ... products sold in EU member countries, though in many such cases manufacturers change their behavior worldwide to comply with the rules. The financial penalties for breaking the rules take into account global turnover. The rules, which will become the Cyber Resilience Act, cover "products with digital elements." These include smart and connected ... (view more)

DNA and ancestry site 23andMe has admitted nearly 7 million customers are affected by a data breach. Both the breach itself and the way the site organizes its data contributed to what could be a legal disaster for the company. 23andMe is named after ... the number of segments of DNA that people share with each parent. The service involves customer submitting a DNA sample to be used either to check for genetic health conditions, get information about ancestry such as ethnic origin, or both. Customers can also agree to be put in touch with other customers when a DNA match suggest a possible family ... (view more)

A federal judge has blocked a Montana state ban of the video sharing app TikTok. The case centers on a clash between security concerns and free speech. The app, which largely features short videos produced by users, is particularly popular with ... younger people. Compared with other video sharing sites, it strongly emphasizes an algorithm showing videos likely to appeal to a specific user, rather than the user actively searching for a particular video or creator. TikTok has come under strong criticism in the US because of its Chinese ownership and questions about how much data it collects about ... (view more)

Researchers say they were unable to find a clear link between Internet use and harm to mental health. However, the results looked at national populations as a whole, rather than individual behavior. The researchers, from Oxford University's Oxford ... Internet Institute, said they were limited by a lack of data and cooperation from major tech companies. The broad research paper, "Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age", looked at studies of psychological wellbeing of around 2.4 million people across 18 countries. The researchers looked at changes in reported wellbeing between ... (view more)

Google is investigating a problem with its online storage tool Drive. It means some users may have lost the last six months of files. The company is still trying to get to the bottom of the problem but has warned affected users against two potential ... actions they say could make the damage irreversible. Drive is Google's cloud storage tool that lets users upload files and access them from any device with an Internet connection. Its primary uses include backing up files from a desktop computer, reducing the need to carry files on a laptop or memory stick, and sharing files with other users. ... (view more)

A police department has warned parents of a new iPhone feature it says could allow shady people to get contact details for children. However, tech experts say the police claim is overblown at best and misleading at worst. The feature is called Name ... Drop and is in the latest version of iOS. It should now be running on most iPhones released in the past 15 years. The feature is also in many models of the Apple Watch. According to the Watertown, Connecticut Police Department, writing on Facebook: "With the new Apple update 'NameDrop' is enabled by default. With this feature enabled, anyone ... (view more)

Video calls could cause more mental fatigue than in-person events according to a recent study. Although the study was on a very small scale, the researchers said the differences were "notable." Austrian academics said they wanted to find out if ... widespread anecdotal reports of "videoconferencing fatigue" were true. They defined the effect as "somatic and cognitive exhaustion that is caused by the intensive and/or inappropriate use of videoconferencing tools." In other words, the exhaustion affected both the mind and the body. The researchers asked 35 students to wear heart monitoring and ... (view more)