Items tagged with (NASDAQ:FB)
App makers are going to have to rethink things when iOS 14 arrives, because the next version of Apple's mobile operating system has a privacy feature that likes to tattle on certain behaviors. We have seen this a few times already, with the iOS 14 beta—notably, the beta revealed TikTok and a few other apps were sneakily accessing clipboard data on iPhone devices. Now Instagram is finding itself under the spotlight for a supposed bug that is causing the camera to stay on even when users are simply scrolling through their feeds. Instagram (owned by Facebook) obviously needs to access to the camera at certain times, because it's a photo and video sharing service. But some users of the iOS...
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Ever find yourself wondering how many times Facebook will drop the ball when it comes to data privacy? The answer is at least one more time, apparently. In a blog post, Facebook admitted it uncovered a flaw that allowed thousands of third-party app developers to access data that they should not have been able to. You may recall that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg sat before Congress and answered a bevy of questions about data collection practices, privacy practices, and so forth, after the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal. Zuckerberg has gone on record multiple times saying government regulation of these things is not necessarily a bad idea. One of the criticisms he faced when answering...
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All eyes in the streaming space are on Tyler "Ninja" Blevins following Microsoft's surprise announcement that Mixer is transitioning to Facebook Gaming. The decision to effectively shutter Mixer comes less than a year after Microsoft lured Ninja away from Twitch, reportedly paying him around $30 million to stream exclusively on the now-defunct platform. "Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the platform for them as quickly and broadly as possible. It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now,...
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The main draw of using WhatsApp is enhanced privacy through end-to-end encryption, followed by its popularity—more than 2 billion people in over 180 countries use the instant messaging service. This also makes privacy and security lapses all the more glaring, when they are found. And according to a security who unsuccessfully tried to collect a bug bounty, there is a "privacy issue" that needs addressed. At the center of the issue is the application's 'click to chat' feature. "WhatsApp's click to chat feature allows you to begin a chat with someone without having their phone number saved in your phone's address book. As long as you know this person’s phone number and they have an...
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It is surprisingly easy to amass a sprawling catalog of photos on Facebook, you just need to use the social media service for any length of time—all those lunch pictures, vacation photos, and everything else you upload from your phone, tablet, and/or PC quickly add up. Now you can copy them over to Google Photos, if you wish. The ability to quickly and easily copy Facebook pictures over to Google Photos for safe keeping is part of a larger initiative to foster sharing data between different services. "For almost a decade, we’ve enabled people to download their information from Facebook. The photo transfer tool we’re starting to roll out today is based on code developed through...
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Facebook has announced that new features are being added to Messenger, which aim to make it a safer place to connect and chat with friends and family. One of the new controls is a safety feature that will help millions of people avoid potentially harmful interactions and possible scams without compromising privacy. Facebook's strategy to keep people safe on Messenger is focused on giving users the information and controls needed to prevent abuse from happening, and detecting abuse and responding quickly if it occurs. Safety notices have been introduced in Messenger that will pop up in a chat and provide tips to help people spot suspicious activity. The safety notices that do pop up will give...
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Video calls have become all the rage over the last few months and Zoom remains one of the most popular choices for group video chat. However, recent security issues have caused many to look for alternatives. Facebook recently launched “Messenger Rooms”, a video chat service for up to 50 users and it just became widely available to users. Here is how you can set-up a group call on Messenger Rooms. How To Create A Facebook Messenger Room If you are the host of a video chat, you will need a Facebook account. If you are creating the “room” through a mobile app, you will want to double-check that you have the most recent version of the Facebook and Messenger mobile...
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Many Facebook app users are likely familiar with Giphy, as the API for the animated GIF service is integrated with the website. Facebook says that 50% of Giphy's traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, with half of that traffic from Instagram alone. For those unfamiliar with Giphy, it's described as a leader in visual expression and creativity. Users will know it as the service that allows you to add gifs and short video clips as a comment on a post rather than typing a message. Facebook has now announced that it has purchased Giphy and will make it part of the Instagram team (the purchase price was a cool $400 million according to Axios). Facebook says that by putting Instagram and its...
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Video and text chatting applications are seeing exponential growth during the coronavirus pandemic as people stuck at home try to keep in touch with friends, family, and coworkers. Facebook has announced that its latest take on video chatting, called Messenger Rooms, is now available to everyone in North America, and will be available globally in the next week. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced availability in a Facebook post, noting that people around the world are relying on video chat to feel connected with the people they care about. Zuckerberg says WhatsApp and Messenger are the most popular video calling services globally. Still, many of the video services out there for large groups are meant...
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The redesigned Facebook desktop UI is rolling out to everyone, and one of the best things about this update is that it brings a dark mode. Anyone who ever gets on Facebook in a darkened room knows the feeling the traditional all-white interface gives. It's almost as if the sun is a few inches from your face. Many Facebook users will want to enable Dark Mode as soon as possible, and here's how you do it. The steps to enable Dark Mode are very simple. Click the upside-down triangle in the top right corner of the new Facebook page. It will open a screen that has your name at the top and stacked links for Give Feedback, Settings & Privacy, Help & Support, and the Dark Mode slider. Click the...
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For anyone who is new to the world of virtual reality, the Oculus Quest starting at $399 is a sensible foray into VR. It's not crazy expensive, and it offers a wireless experience with decent all around performance. In addition, users can hook it up to a PC if they want to, and play games designed for the Rift. It's a pretty enticing headset, in other words, but what will the next version bring? Improvements all around, apparently. Before we get to that, here's a rundown of the Quest's pertinent specifications... Optics: OLED Resolution: 1440x1600 per eye Refresh Rate: 72Hz Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 RAM: 4GB Storage: 64GB or 128GB Tracking: Inside-out, six degrees of freedom (6DoF) Audio:...
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It is not always to easy to discern bogus news stories from legitimate ones, partly because this is a crazy world we live in. Regardless of the reason, the advent of 'fake news' presents a problem for social media sites and other service. Helping to do its part, WhatsApp recently imposed a limit on message forwards and is seeing big results. WhatsApp introduced the added restrictions in the first week of April. It is part of an ongoing effort to curb the potential spread of misinformation. It started with WhatsApp adding double arrows to messages that had been forwarded many times, a measure it put in place in 2018. It followed this up limiting users from forwarding a message to more than five...
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Facebook has introduced a new way for friends or coworkers to get together during the coronavirus pandemic, called Messenger Rooms. Facebook says that Messenger Rooms was designed to allow people to spend "quality time with friends, loved ones, and people who share their interests." Users can create a room from within Messenger or Facebook and then invite anyone to join the video call, even if they don't have a Facebook account. Messenger Rooms "will soon" hold up to 50 people with no time limit. Users can start and share rooms on Facebook through News Feed or Groups and Events. The social network says that it intends to soon add ways to allow users to create Rooms from Instagram Direct, WhatsApp,...
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Facebook is launching a new live gaming app called Facebook Gaming: Watch, Play, and Connect. The app marks Facebook's most significant move into the video game segment coming at a time when people are stuck indoors due to the coronavirus and looking for ways to relax. The app is offered at no cost and is designed for creating and watching live gameplay allowing Facebook to battle directly against Twitch, YouTube, and Mixer. The Facebook Gaming app was supposed to launch in June, but Facebook launched early to take advantage of the hordes of people around the country, and the world, who are stuck at home. The person in charge of the Facebook app is Fidji Simo, who reports directly to Mark Zuckerberg....
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It should come as no surprise that video conferencing software is seeing a sudden uptick in usage—more people are telecommuting in order to social distance themselves amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Zoom is among the beneficiaries of the current situation, though not without controversy. New research indicates that Zoom's iOS app is sending analytical data to Facebook on the sly. Apps sending information to Facebook is not the least bit uncommon. Many apps and services tie their offerings into Facebook, and it can be convenient for users who do not want to juggle yet another account. But when it comes to sharing analytical data, that sort of thing should be made clear to users, and require...
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The government is urging people to keep their distance from others to help slow and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The government is currently in talks with Facebook and Google along with a range of other technology companies and health experts to determine how they may be able to use location data gathered from smartphones to glean information about the coronavirus. Public health experts believe that private companies may be able to compile data in an anonymous and aggregated form that could be used to map the spread of the infection. Details of the talks come from a trio of unnamed sources cited by the Washington Post, which claim that the project is in the early stages. While analyzing...
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For a period of time yesterday, Facebook was on the fritz, blocking content that did not run afoul of any rules, including posts on the coronavirus. However, those were not the only ones. As our own Marco Chiappetta noted, some of his boxing friends had posts blocked about Roger Mayweather's death, while others had entertainment related posts flagged and removed. "Count me in. My post on letting seniors in grocery stores early for shopping during the crisis was marked invisible for being against community standards," our own Dave Altavilla noted in response to Marco's Facebook post. Quite frankly, I could have done without the news that the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, had decided...
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WhatsApp is popular because its end-to-end encryption gives users warm fuzzies over the privacy and security of their chats. However, the chat messaging application might not be quite as secure or private as you thought (or at least that was the case). That's because Google had been indexing links to group chats, which in turn allowed any Joe or Jane to join and see potentially private information. Apparently this had been going on for several years. As a result, there were hundreds of thousands of indexed chat group links on the web, all of which were a simple Google search away. Your WhatsApp groups may not be as secure as you think they are. The "Invite to Group via Link" feature allows groups...
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U.S. lawmakers have been on a mission to kill end-to-end encryption as we known it. And we're not just talking about killing encryption (or at least providing backdoors) on devices like iPhones or the Google Pixel 4, but also online software platforms from Facebook and Google. The bill is entitled "The Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2019,” which of course has to work out to some hip catchphrase, which in this case is the "EARN IT Act". Sponsors of the bill include Senators Lindsay Graham (R) and Richard Blumenthal (D). At its heart, the senators claim that the legislation is aimed at stopping child sexual abuse and the exploitation of...
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Tax season is upon us, and one thing nobody wants to deal with is getting audited. In a sense, however, that is what some major tech corporations have to deal with, as the Federal Trade Commission announced it is looking into hundreds of prior acquisitions made by Alphabet (including Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. The FTC is essentially asking major tech companies to open their books and make sure that everything is on the up and up. It also wants to "deepen its understanding" of how large technology handle acquisitions, including they get reported to federal antitrust agencies, and whether some of the smaller mergers fall under the radar of potentially being anti-competitive....
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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published an article today that says one of the main goals of the social network in 2020 is to build "much stronger privacy protections for everyone on Facebook." Zuckerberg says that Facebook knows it has a lot of work to do in that realm, which is why it's making it a priority not only for the teams at Facebook but for Zuckerberg personally. Since today is Data Privacy Day, Zuckerberg says that he wanted to share some of the work his company is doing to give users more control over privacy both on and off Facebook. Over the next few weeks, Facebook will start showing nearly 2 billion people around the world a prompt encouraging them to review privacy...
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Facebook announced it plans to crack down on the proliferation of video content that has been manipulated in certain ways to appear as authentic and intentionally misleading. Also known as "deepfakes," these kinds of videos use artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to superimpose content onto a video clip. The timing of Facebook's decision to beef up its enforcement of misleading videos comes during the early part of a US presidential election year. This is the fourth year of US President Donald Trump serving as the command in chief, and barring an unlikely eviction through an impeachment trial in the Republican-led Senate, he will seek re-election. It is important to note that...
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