Important announcements
Facebook users’ phone numbers are for sale through a Telegram bot
The security researcher who found this vulnerability, Alon Gal, says that the person who runs the bot claims to have the information of 533 million users, which came from a Facebook vulnerability that was patched in 2019. So far, Telegram and Facebook have not responded to the report. Also, the former has not attempted to block the bot from selling personal information on its messenger app.
You can read more here.
Google deleted nearly 100,000 negative reviews of the Robinhood app from the Google Play Store
After restricted trading of GameStop stock (GME), the Robinhood Android app has received thousands of negative reviews. The app’s rating has hit 1.0 out of a possible 5 stars, the lowest possible rating one can achieve for an app on the Play Store. Now, Google eliminated recent negative reviews, bringing the app back up to a 4.2-star rating.
More info are available here.
Europol, the FBI, the UK’s National Crime Agency and other agencies took down the world’s most dangerous malware botnet
The botnet named Emotet was linked to as much as 70% of the malware used around the world to steal financial data and install ransomware. Europol called it “one of most significant botnets of the past decade” and one of the main “door openers” for computer systems worldwide. Law enforcement agencies in the UK, North America and Europe had worked for almost two years to map the system’s infrastructure before the National Police of Ukraine raided properties to capture the computers it was being controlled from.
You can read more here.
Top new products
Oppo A55 5G
Oppo A55 5G has a 6.5-inch display, Dimensity 700 processor, 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage. It comes with a 5,000mAh battery.
More info here.
Motorola Edge S 5G
Motorola Edge S 5G will have a 6.7-inch display, Snapdragon 870 processor, up to 8GB RAM and up to 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. It will come with a 5,000mAh battery.
More info here.
Samsung Galaxy XCover 5
Galaxy XCover 5 will have Exynos 850 processor and 4 GB of RAM. It will come with Android 11 OS.
More info here.
Top interesting info
SpaceX broke a world space record by launching 143 satellites on a single mission
SpaceX said there were 133 commercial and government spacecraft and 10 Starlink satellites. The commercial and government spacecraft consisted of CubeSats, microsats and orbital transfer vehicles while the Starlink satellites are the first of their kind to be going into a polar orbit.
You can read more here.
Google will stop collecting advertising identifiers in iOS apps
Prior to these changes, apps on iOS were able to collect these advertising identifiers which allowed them to create ads that were more targeted and personalized to the user. Google warned app developers that this could potentially have a negative impact on their ad revenue.
More info can be found here.
Telegram launched a new update to import chat history from other apps like WhatsApp
The addition of the feature comes as Telegram is reporting huge increases in user numbers. The cause appears to be WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. The import process works on a chat-by-chat basis, but appears to work for both individual and group conversations.
You can read more here.
