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X, formerly known as Twitter, appears to have scaled back a tool for reporting election misinformation. The tool appears to now only be available in Europe. The BBC notes the tool launched in Australia, South Korea and the United States in 2021 and ... expanded to other countries last year. However, a non-profit group says it's now only available in European Union countries. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Users on the former Twitter can report posts which they believe breach the site's guidelines, but must choose a specific category. That includes breaches such as spam or hate speech, but no longer ... (view more)

A ransomware gang said to have Russian links appears to have been knocked offline. The REvil group recently demanded a $70 million ransom after a major attack. The group was linked to two recent attacks, the first on an international meat processing ... company. JBS, which is estimated to process 20 percent of the beef and pork sold in the US, had to shut down production while dealing with the breach. An even more serious attack targeted Kaseya, a company that not only offers computing services to businesses, but also powers many managed service providers that run IT for their own clients. The ... (view more)

A man who was part of a hacking gang that stole medical records and tried to blackmail an accounting company has been sentenced to five years in prison. Nathan Wyatt was a member of a group calling themselves The Dark Overlord. British-born Wyatt ... had previously been extradited to the United States. He was charged with conspiracy against the US, threatening damage to a protected computer, and aggravated identify theft. Originally Wyatt pleaded not guilty. He later changed his plea to guilty on the conspiracy charge and received a five year prison sentence and ordered to pay $1,467,048 in ... (view more)

Measures to stop misinformation spreading on messaging service WhatsApp appear to be making a difference. The Facebook-owned business says its seen fewer "highly forwarded messages". A couple of weeks back , WhatsApp took action after fears it was ... being used to spread bogus and potentially dangerous claims about COVID-19. One big worry was that people who saw a message in one group chat would forward it to multiple other group chats, quickly increasing the number of people who saw it. Extra Niggle May Spark Rethink The changes involved any message that had been forwarded at least five times. ... (view more)

A messaging service owned by Facebook is purposely limiting the amount of times users can forward a message. It's an attempt to slow the spread of false information. The change to WhatsApp follows a six month trial in India sparked off by several ... cases where bogus stories led to lynch mobs. WhatsApp lets users send text messages, video, images and documents. One of its core functions is a group system that lets a set of friends, family members, work colleagues or people with a share interest send a single message that reaches everyone in the group. The maximum group size is 256. One Message ... (view more)

A consumer group is demanding compensation for users who've spent time and money fixing computer problems caused by Windows 10. It also wants updates and tech support to be improved. The call comes from "Which?", an independent organization in the ... United Kingdom that's similar to the US Consumer Reports group. It's brought up Windows 10 in the past: two years ago it revealed that more than 1,000 of its members had complained about the system. Now Which? says it's continuing to receive complaints and carried out a survey of members. It questioned more than 1,100 members who use ... (view more)

Google says human error allowed videos from a banned Neo-Nazi group to remain on YouTube despite reports. It says it will look at both human and automated changes to stop it happening again. The videos involved National Action, a far right Neo-Nazi ... group in the United Kingdom. The government there has proscribed the group. That's a special measure for groups that are actively carrying out, preparing or promoting terrorism rather than merely expressing offensive views. British law means it's illegal to be a member of a proscribed group or take part in its meetings. The UK government describes ... (view more)

Former Facebook and Google employees are campaigning to warn users of the dangers of tech addiction. The 'Center for Humane Technology' will work on lobbying officials and educating children and parents. Though the organization has been running ... since 2014, it's not achieved much publicity so far. That could change with a high-profile relaunch after receiving several forms of funding including cash from a "media watchdog" non-profit, plus the equivalent of $50 million in free advertising space from companies such as Comcast and DirecTV. Google 'Ethicist' In Charge The group is largely made up ... (view more)

Security researchers say its highly likely hackers linked to North Korea were responsible for the recent widespread WannaCry ransomware attack . The same group, dubbed Lazarus, was previously blamed for two other high profile online attacks. ... According to security firm Symantec, the WannaCry attacks bore five distinct hallmarks of previous attacks thought to be the work of the Lazarus group. This includes shared code such as that used to spread the malware from machine to machine. Other common factors include the same IP address being used to issue commands to infected machines, and similar ... (view more)