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      Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Yesterday - 20:25

    Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

    Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

    Unsealed court documents have revealed more details about a secret Facebook project initially called "Ghostbusters," designed to sneakily access encrypted Snapchat usage data to give Facebook a leg up on its rival, just when Snapchat was experiencing rapid growth in 2016.

    The documents were filed in a class-action lawsuit from consumers and advertisers, accusing Meta of anticompetitive behavior that blocks rivals from competing in the social media ads market.

    "Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted, we have no analytics about them," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who has since rebranded his company as Meta) wrote in a 2016 email to Javier Olivan.

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      Projet Ghostbusters – Quand Meta espionnait Snapchat

      news.movim.eu / Korben · Yesterday - 03:59 · 1 minute

    Figurez-vous que notre cher Meta (anciennement Facebook, alias Face2Bouc pour tonton Michel), s’est fait prendre la main dans le sac en train d’ espionner son concurrent Snapchat ! Et attention, on ne parle pas d’un petit coup d’œil indiscret, non c’est carrément une opération d’espionnage digne des meilleurs films d’espionnage, au nom de code : « Projet Ghostbusters » !

    Alors comment cette histoire a débuté ?

    Eh bien tout simplement parce que Zucky et sa bande étaient jaloux de ne pas avoir accès aux précieuses données analytiques de Snapchat. Ils ont donc sorti l’artillerie lourde : Onavo , leur propre VPN censé protéger la vie privée des utilisateurs. Sauf qu’en fait, c’était tout l’inverse !

    Grâce à Onavo, Meta a pu installer ses propres certificats SSL/TLS ce qui lui a permis d’ intercepter le trafic de Snapchat et d’autres apps comme YouTube ou Amazon, pour les espionner en douce !

    Une équipe de choc de 41 avocats et dirigeants avait même été mobilisée pour mener à bien cette mission top secrète.

    Bon évidemment, quand l’affaire a éclaté en 2018, Meta a essayé de noyer le poisson en mode « circulez y a rien à voir ». Mais aujourd’hui les documents judiciaires ne mentent pas et montrent bien que Zuckerberg était au courant de tout ce bazar. Et le pire dans tout ça, c’est que cette opération pourrait bien être totalement illégale selon la loi américaine sur les écoutes électroniques !

    En espionnant Snapchat, Meta voulait surtout avoir un avantage sur le marché publicitaire où la concurrence fait rage.

    Bref c’est pas joli joli et Zuckerberg risque bien d’avoir des ennuis avec la justice américaine.

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      Violent online content ‘unavoidable’ for UK children, Ofcom finds

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 15 March - 00:01

    Every child interviewed by media watchdog had watched violent material on the internet

    Violent online content is now “unavoidable” for children in the UK, with many first exposed to it when they are still in primary school, research from the media watchdog has found.

    Every single British child interviewed for the Ofcom study had watched violent material on the internet, ranging from videos of local school and street fights shared in group chats, to explicit and extreme graphic violence, including gang-related content.

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      EU calls on tech firms to outline plans to tackle deepfakes amid election fears

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 14 March - 14:46

    Move involving companies such as Google, Facebook and X comes after evidence of Russian online interference in polls

    The EU is calling on eight major tech companies including Google, Facebook and X to detail how they identify and tackle deepfake material amid concerns about the use of the technology to influence elections .

    In a world first they will be using new laws on artificial intelligence to force companies to root out fake video, imagery and audio.

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      Crimes involving child abuse imagery are up by a quarter in UK, says NSPCC

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 1 March - 07:00

    Nearly half of incidents where platform was known occurred on Snapchat, with 26% on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp

    Crimes involving child abuse imagery (CAI) have risen by a quarter in the past year, according to figures collated by the NSPCC.

    Nearly half of those incidents where the platform was recorded occurred on Snapchat, while Meta’s family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, covered another 26%.

    In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood ( Napac ) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

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      Snapchat isn’t liable for connecting 12-year-old to convicted sex offenders

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 22 February - 19:56

    Snapchat isn’t liable for connecting 12-year-old to convicted sex offenders

    Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg )

    A judge has dismissed a complaint from a parent and guardian of a girl, now 15, who was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old after Snapchat recommended that she connect with convicted sex offenders.

    According to the court filing, the abuse that the girl, C.O., experienced on Snapchat happened soon after she signed up for the app in 2019. Through its "Quick Add" feature, Snapchat "directed her" to connect with "a registered sex offender using the profile name JASONMORGAN5660." After a little more than a week on the app, C.O. was bombarded with inappropriate images and subjected to sextortion and threats before the adult user pressured her to meet up, then raped her. Cops arrested the adult user the next day, resulting in his incarceration, but his Snapchat account remained active for three years despite reports of harassment, the complaint alleged.

    Two years later, at 14, C.O. connected with another convicted sex offender on Snapchat, a former police officer who offered to give C.O. a ride to school and then sexually assaulted her. The second offender is also currently incarcerated, the judge's opinion noted.

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      ‘Not letting me on Snapchat was the best thing my mum ever did for me’: how to talk to your kids about social media

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 17 February - 15:00

    When her 14-year-old child asked for social media, Guardian advice columnist Annalisa Barbieri held firm. Thank goodness, says her daughter, now grown up

    As a parent, you prepare yourself for various milestones: their first tooth, first step, first word. But here we were, my eldest daughter, Raffaella, and I, and it was her first real push asking for social media. She was 14. She had talked about it before, but more in curiosity – this time she was serious. She wanted it; specifically Snapchat. And she was at the negotiating table with that focused, steely look in her eye that I have always admired.

    I started negotiations with a simple question: “Why?” Her reasons were all to do with not wanting to feel left out. Entirely understandable. But, I explained to her, if someone wanted to leave you out they still could, by jumping from one app to another until – what? You were no longer the driver in your own life but following someone else’s agenda. Where would it stop? And what if something were shared among the whole school or taken out of context?

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      Vous avez acheté le drone mignon de Snapchat ? Sa batterie peut prendre feu

      news.movim.eu / Numerama · Friday, 2 February - 09:32

    Snap organise une campagne de rappel concernant Pixy, son drone mignon commercialisé en 2022. En cause : un problème avec la batterie, qui peut surchauffer et provoquer un incendie. Un remboursement est garanti pour les propriétaires.

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      ‘It was forced’: grieving parents unfazed by sorry tech CEOs at US Senate hearing

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 1 February - 10:00

    Many parents held up images of the children who died after falling prey to abusers on apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat

    Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of children who killed themselves after being subjected to online sexual exploitation during a US Senate hearing Wednesday. Evan Spiegel offered condolences to parents whose children obtained deadly illegal drugs via Snapchat. The words were too little, too late for their intended audience, though. The grieving guardians expressed only frustration with the social media CEOs’ responses to their plight and to questions from members of Congress.

    “I’m not happy with the answers the CEOs are giving. They can’t give a straight answer. Not even ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Tammy Rodriguez, the mother of Selena Rodriguez, who was 11 when she died by suicide three years ago after being solicited for sexually exploitative content by strangers on Instagram and Snapchat.

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