Musk pushes organisations to pay for blue tick
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has pushed for organisations to pay a monthly subscription fee for themselves and their employees in order to prevent impersonation on the platform, as previously issued blue ticks are set to be removed from April 1. A base subscription per month for an organisation costs around $1000 in the U.S. and ₹82,300 per month in India, not including monthly subscription fees for organisation employees.
However, several news companies such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Buzzfeed have reportedly confirmed that they will not be paying for blue tick verification for their company accounts or those of employees.
Google sanctioned again
For the second time in the space of a few days, search engine giant Google has been sanctioned by a U.S. judge. While it was earlier sanctioned in a separate case over the alleged destruction of potential evidence such as employee chat logs, it has now been sanctioned for taking too long to comply with a ruling in a data-privacy class action.
The class action claimed that Google unlawfully tracked its users even when they had activated the Chrome browser’s incognito mode. Google has been ordered to pay legal fees, a fine of $79,000, and cannot rely on certain witnesses during the proceedings, according to the judge’s order.
New spyware targets iOS/Android devices
Google’s Threat Analysis Group reported that two new campaigns used 0-day exploits alongside n-day exploits against Android, iOS, and Chrome users. The first campaign targeted users via short links sent by text, to lead victims to a website that delivered the exploit. The second campaign, discovered by Amnesty International, reportedly contained a complete exploit chain targeting the latest versions of Samsung’s internet browser. Some iOS GPS locations were also compromised, according to the Threat Analysis Group.
One campaign affected users in Italy, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan, while the second campaign targeted users in the United Arab Emirates.
