In December, Facebook decided to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit. Facebook users in the US can now claim their slice of the pie.
US-based Facebook users can now claim a piece of the enormous settlement payment by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This news follows Meta agreeing to pay $725 million in December 2022 to settle the longstanding class action lawsuit filed by Lauren Price in 2018.
Price accused the company of unlawful business practices concerning its use and distribution of users’ personal data. Price was a Facebook user for eight years before the scandal happened. Her lawsuit asked for $500 million.
As part of the settlement, US Facebook users—those still active and those who have already deleted their accounts—will be compensated financially. CNN points potentially affected and eligible users to this claim form.
It takes only a few minutes to complete. Although the form asks for personal information, it clarifies that what users provide “will be processed only for purposes of effectuating the settlement.”
Because of the amounts of money involved, and the personal information required to make a claim, readers are advised to be careful of imposter claim forms and websites asking for their details.
Furthermore, claimants are advised to whitelist the email address, confirmation@facebookuserprivacysettlement.com, to ensure they receive future correspondence from the settlement administrator should they need to get in touch.
As to how much each claimant might get, it depends on the number of submitted valid claims and how long claimants were Facebook users.
“We pursued a settlement as it’s in the best interest of our community and shareholders,” said Dina Luce, Meta spokesperson, in a statement following the settlement agreement in December. “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program. We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”
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Samsung has reportedly developed a new processor for its smartwatches. Sources have told SamMobile that the upcoming Galaxy Watch 6 series will ship with an unannounced Exynos W980 chipset. The Korean firm will probably officially announce the chipset closer to the watch’s launch later this year.
Galaxy Watch 6’s Exynos W980 is about ten percent faster
Samsung has used the same processor in the past two generations of its smartwatches. The Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 5 series are powered by the Exynos W920, a 5nm chipset featuring two ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores, an ARM Mali-G68 GPU, an integrated 4G LTE modem, and a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) L1. It appears the company won’t use this chipset for the third year in a row. The Galaxy Watch 6 series will get a new and improved processor.
According to the new report, the Exynos W980 is more than ten percent faster than the Exynos W920. The publication doesn’t yet have access to the CPU and GPU details of the unannounced chipset, though. So it’s unclear what else has changed. We’ll have to wait for more details to emerge before we can tell if it’s the same chipset with an overclocked CPU and GPU or if Samsung has developed a new semiconductor chip from scratch.
While we hope it’s a completely new chip, there’s also a possibility that it’s a re-branded Exynos W920 with performance improvements. That’s based on the recent rumors that Samsung has made major changes to its 5nm chip fabrication process. Industry insiders claim that the changes would bring a notable performance boost to the new manufacturing lot of existing Exynos chips. The Exynos W980 could be an Exynos W920 manufactured on the improved process node.
Either way, it appears the Galaxy Watch 6 series would offer much better performance than Samsung’s current smartwatches. We are also expecting improved power efficiency. On top of that, the new watches are seemingly getting bigger batteries too. All of this should allow for much-improved battery life. On the aesthetic side of things, the new watches will reportedly feature bigger screens with slimmer bezels. The vanilla Galaxy Watch 6 may get a curved screen while the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic will bring back the iconic physical rotating bezel.
Samsung will launch the new smartwatches in the second half of 2023
The Galaxy Watch 6 series is still a few months away. Samsung isn’t expected to unveil the new smartwatches before August of this year. The launch event should also bring the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 foldables and a new pair of TWS earbuds. As usual, leaks about these devices should come more frequently as the launch draws closer. We may also hear more about the Exynos W980 in the coming months. Stay tuned and we will keep you updated.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the merging of Google Brain and DeepMind teams. The resulting team, now called Google DeepMind, is tasked with boosting the company’s AI efforts.
Maybe few people could predict a simple AI chatbot called ChatGPT would challenge a tech giant and the biggest search engine in the world. ChatGPT’s threat prompted Google to act quickly and launch a rival, Bard. Google Bard still needs to catch up to ChatGPT in many ways. That’s why Google is now joining forces to take the competition to a whole new level.
Back in March, Google tasked the Assistant team to work on Bard. Now, the company is merging Google Brain and DeepMind to form Google DeepMind. The new team will focus on developing AI products and improving Bard. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis will be the head of Google DeepMind, and he’s tasked with powering the next generation of Google products and services.
In a letter to employees, Hassabis said they need to tackle some of the hardest scientific and engineering challenges of the time in order to build a more capable AI. He added, “We need to work with greater speed, stronger collaboration, and execution, and simplify the way we make decisions to focus on achieving the biggest impact.”
Google DeepMind wants to unify the company’s AI efforts
Pichai said this initiative would “significantly accelerate our progress in AI.” The tech giant acquired DeepMind in 2014, and its in-house Brain department has been researching AI for years. Both teams have developed multiple AI-driven services for Google, including AlphaGo, Transformers, word2vec, etc.
Jeff Dean, former SVP of Google Research and Health, will also serve as Chief Scientist to Google DeepMind. He reports directly to the CEO. Pichai says Dean would lead the future of Google AI research and head up the company’s most critical and strategic technical AI projects, including multimodal AI models.
Google is not alone in competing with ChatGPT. Elon Musk has recently launched a new AI company, X.AI, to develop the so-called TruthGPT. The Chinese tech giant Alibaba is also working on a domestic version of ChatGPT.
Microsoft also stole the show by integrating ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. The latest reports suggest that Samsung might switch the default search engine of its products to Bing and ditch Google.
After a successful public testing of the new Home app released back in November, Google announced some of the improvements it decided to bring to those enrolled in the Public Preview program. Thanks to the feedback received, Google has been able to roll out numerous updated and important improvements over the last few months, and some of them are ready for primetime.First off, the option to reorder your favorites for a custom home view is now rolling out for Public Preview users. If you’re part of the testing program, you’ll be able to take advantage of the new feature starting this week. It will allow you to rearrange anything that’s pinned to your Favorites tab.
Another important improvement added to the Home app is related to cameras. Google confirmed it has kicked off the rollout of improvements to the speed of live view for cameras, as well as how quickly users can access their camera recordings. This wouldn’t have been possible without the feedback received from Home app users since the testing began almost six months ago.
Last but not least, Google announced that new features are coming to the Public Preview of the Home app for Wear OS. Those who own Nest cameras and doorbells will be pleased to learn that they will start receiving notifications that include images on their Wear OS watches. It will make it much easier to figure out what’s happening at a glance. The new feature will be available for all Nest cameras and doorbells launched in 2021 or later.
Keep in mind that you have to use the new Home app to benefit from the new features, so make sure to sign up for the preview program if you didn’t already. Since Google is happy with the results of the Public Preview program, expect more new features to be released in the coming weeks.
ESET researchers have recently discovered that Linux users targeted with malware in the new “Operation DreamJob” Lazarus campaign for the first time.
The group behind DreamJob deploys social engineering tactics with the guise of fake job offers as lures to compromise its targets.
Experts could reconstruct the complete sequence by tracing the chain from a false HSBC job offer in a ZIP file to the distribution of the SimplexTea Linux backdoor via an OpenDrive cloud storage account.
This North Korea-linked threat actor’s use of Linux malware in this operation is publicly mentioned for the first time. This discovery also enabled experts to confirm that Lazarus was responsible for the 3CX supply-chain attack.
3CX Supply-chain Attack
Many companies rely on 3CX for their phone systems service, as it is one of the leading international providers of VoIP and telephone services.
There are more than 600,000 customers available to 3CX, and in the following sectors, it also has more than 12,000,000 users:-
Aerospace
Healthcare
Hospitality
The discovery of malicious code in the desktop application for Windows and macOS was made in March 2023.
While this allowed the downloading and running of arbitrary code on all machines with the installed application by a group of attackers.
As a result, the 3CX software was hacked, and external attackers used it to distribute malware to specific customers as part of a supply-chain attack.
Here Below we have mentioned the timeline:-
Operation Dream Job
The group behind Operation Dream Job (aka DeathNote or NukeSped) uses fake job offers to trick people into downloading malware in multiple attack waves.
At the moment, it’s unclear how the ZIP file was distributed, but spear-phishing or direct messages on LinkedIn are the suspected methods.
These social engineering attacks deceive victims into downloading files that infect their computers with malware by posing as employment-related documents, ESET Says.
Apart from this, the backdoor written in C++ has the same appearance as the one previously associated with the group called BADCALL, it’s another Windows trojan.
The ZIP archive that is in question is distributed via spearphishing or direct messages on LinkedIn and the archive is named:-
A Linux binary written in Go is hidden inside the archive, which is named with a Unicode character to appear as a PDF file.
The filename’s extension isn’t “.pdf” because the apparent dot is a U+2024 Unicode character that serves as a leader dot.
The leader dot in the filename was likely a trick to fool the file manager into running the file as an executable rather than a PDF, leading to unintended execution upon double-clicking.
Double-clicking the file launches the OdicLoader malware, which downloads a second-stage malware from a private repository on OpenDrive while displaying a fake PDF document as a decoy.
OdicLoader delivers the SimplexTea payload, which it drops at ~/.config/guiconfigd/SimplexTea, and alters the user’s ~/.bash_profile to ensure that SimplexTea runs with Bash and remains silenced during new shell sessions.
Supply-chain attacks are a favored method of malware distribution for their stealthiness, and Lazarus used this technique in 2020 to target South Korean users of WIZVERA VeraPort software.
Previous Operation DreamJob attacks by Lazarus were incredibly lucrative, resulting in the group’s theft of $620 million from Axie Infinity.
The techniques and similarities observed in the recent 3CX hack align with the Lazarus group’s typical modus operandi and toolset, indicating their strong involvement.
Moreover, the notorious group Lazarus has claimed another high-profile win with their recent supply-chain attack on 3CX.
Do you remember Super Meat Boy, the game for Xbox 360 that came out what feels like forever ago? If you don’t, it was a tough as nails game that ground you down till there was potentially nothing left of your sanity. Initially it released on the Xbox 360 back in 2010, and it then later came to PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, Windows, Linux, Mac, and eventually Nintendo Switch.
Even if you never played it with its original release, chances are you may have seen or experienced in some form. Now Super Meat Boy is back to test your patience in Super Meat Boy Forever, the mobile adaption to this popular platformer. And it can be yours for only $0.99.
The game released on April 20 on both Android and iOS, and is a direct successor to the original Super Meat Boy, taking place a few years after those events.
Super Meat Boy Forever changes up the formula
While the challenge is still there, you might notice some things that are different about this game from the original. For instance, the original Super Meat Boy allowed players to control the movement of the character entirely. In this new game, controls are somewhat automated. Specifically the movement.
Meat Boy will now move automatically. But you can still control other things like jumping and attacks. It’s a slight twist but overall still a ton of fun if you like platforming games with a steep challenge. The game should provide hours up hours of fun. As the developers say it contains “thousands of level chunks that can be combined in endless ways.”
Levels are also randomly composed so no two playthrough should really ever feel the same. For $0.99, this is a proper steal considering the level of quality gamers are getting. You can pick it up right now on Google Play, and you can check out the trailer above.
YouTube TV is getting a pretty big update, at least for the Apple TV. Which has seen quite a few problems for YouTube TV in recent months. According to a post from a YouTube Community Manager on r/YouTubeTV, the update is v1.13+ and it’s available now. This update includes fixes for the app opening up to a black screen, enabling YouTube TV’s HDR implementation and also addressing 4K playback issues.
Now that’s not all that’s new with YouTube TV. It has also announced that it has found the cause for 5.1 audio and video sync being off. And they are testing out a fix for it now.
Of course, the post also talks about NFL Sunday Ticket, and says that you can still sign up for it now and save $100 on the first year. You can do this by going to your Memberships page and signing up.
Picture quality improvements
Another big emphasis here is that the team is experimenting with picture quality improvements. It’s testing some transcoding changes, and that includes a bitrate increase for live 1080p content, over the next few weeks. This is going to target devices that support the VP9 codec, and high-speed internet connections. The team plans to roll this out by the summer, if all goes well.
Finally, YouTube TV has said that they are continuing to make changes to Multiview, which rolled out in time for March Madness. It is planning to make some more improvements ahead of the NFL Season. Though it did not give any specifics about what changes Multiview might receive.
So, there’s some pretty big updates for YouTube TV, as well as some changes. Making that price increase to $72.99 per month almost worth it. While many complain about the price increases, YouTube TV does still have the best platform for streaming live TV right now.
YouTube TV has announced via a post on their official Reddit account that it has made some updates to improve picture quality on its apps. The updates have been implemented in response to complaints from users about the streaming quality of YouTube TV and some major bugs specifically on the Apple TV platform.
Apple TV Fixes
On the Apple TV, a major update (version 1.13+) is coming which will address difficulties with the app opening up to a dark screen, will allow HDR implementation, and fix some bugs with 4k playback. Not addressed with this app version, but available in the app store very soon, will be a solution to the issue in which the application would crash on the first-generation 4K Apple TV when it is left on.
Lastly, the team offered an immediately solution for users experiencing a momentary black screen when switching between content, explaining that this is happening because of the SDR/HDR transitioning that is taking place. The fix involves either setting SDR as content as your default format or disabling range matching altogether, both of which you can change from the Settings > Video and Audio menu.
Aside from the major fixes for Apple TV, the team also announced some new features that will impact all platforms where YouTube TV runs, including mobile.
Improvements everywhere else
YouTube TV successfully implemented “Multiview” to all its subscribers in response to the fervent demand during March Madness. Now, the company is working on further enhancements to the feature in order to ensure a seamless experience once the NFL season rolls around. No specific updates were shared in the blog post about what type of enhancements we will see, but as the Football season draws near, we can expect to receive more details soon.
Since we are on the subject of Football and the NFL, YouTube TV added that its users can now access NFL Sunday Ticket by navigating to the “Memberships” page in their settings. Alternatively, they can head to the “Movies & TV” section on YouTube to sign up for the service or explore the various plans that are currently available. For a limited time, interested parties can sign up for a full season package at a discounted price until June 6th.
YouTube TV is also addressing the issue of picture quality on their streams by conducting a series of tests on transcoding modifications in the next few weeks. The tests will involve a boost in bitrate for live 1080p content on all devices that are compatible with the VP9 codec and that benefit from fast internet connectivity. Assuming a successful outcome of these tests, the intention is to make this a permanent fixture by the upcoming summer season.
In its announcement, the YouTube TV team also claimed to have identified the root cause of the audio/video synchronization problems that have been plaguing the app lately and which occur when the surround sound feature is enabled. Now that they’ve done their research on this, the team states that it is now actively working on a solution and will be conducting tests in the near future.
These updates are part of YouTube TV’s ongoing efforts to improve the service and make it more competitive with other live TV streaming services, such as Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV, and PlayStation Vue. Recent significant price increases and the loss of several regional sports channels have caused many subscribers to drop the service and look for solutions elsewhere, so YouTube TV could definitely use a boost in subscriptions at this time and introducing new features along with fixing ongoing issues is not a bad way to go about it.
Researchers have recently found that the ICICI Bank systems misconfiguration caused data leakage, exposing more than 3.6 million customers’ sensitive data.
ICICI Bank, a multinational Indian bank, operates in 15+ countries worldwide and boasts a market value exceeding $76 billion with 5,000+ branches across India.
The Indian government declared ICICI Bank’s resources as “critical information infrastructure” in 2022, signifying that any harm may have severe implications on national security.
Data Leak
Threat actors target financial services and organizations more frequently than other sectors. And in this case, if they managed to gain complete access to the leaked data, it could damage both the bank and its customers.
ICICI Bank’s sensitive data and its clients’ information were exposed when the Cybernews research team found a misconfigured and publicly accessible Digital Ocean bucket with over 3.6 million files on February 1.
Here below, we have mentioned the types of data leaked:-
Bank account details
Credit card numbers
Full names
Dates of birth
Home addresses
Phone numbers
Emails
In addition to leaking bank statements and filled-in KYC forms, the bucket exposed clients’ passports, IDs, and Indian PANs (taxpayer identification numbers).
In the storage, CVs of current employees of the bank, as well as job applicants, were found. This is another indication that the leak also affected staff at the bank.
The impact of the leak is expected to be severe due to the massive amount of personal data is leaked, which can potentially damage:-
Reputation of the bank
Expose internal processes of the bank
Compromise the safety and security of clients’ sensitive data
Compromise the safety and security of employees’ sensitive data
According to the report, Leaked data could enable threat actors to engage in identity theft and fraud, such as creating accounts in individuals’ names without their knowledge using stolen credentials and personal information.
Not only that, even as a result, spear phishing campaigns may target employees, businesses, and individuals whose data has been exposed, putting them at risk.
Alert : Many Users Are Receiving This Type Of SMS Or E-mail From ICICI Bank As A Precautionary Measure.
AFAIU, They Are Aware Of Such Data Leak By Merchant Where We’ve Transacted Before.
Also, selling data on the dark web is a potential risk, and ICICI Bank could also become a target of ransomware attacks.
Company’s Response
After identifying the issue, the security researchers immediately contacted the following entities in an attempt to report this loophole:-
ICICI Bank
Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN)
As soon as they reported the issue to ICICI Bank, they acted immediately, and on March 30, they restricted all public access to their Digital Ocean bucket.
When security experts at Cybernews tried to get an official comment from the communication team of the ICICI Bank, they received the following reply via email from the bank:-
“Thanks for your email. With regards to it, we do not know which incident you are referring to.”
Later when they tried to establish their communication with the bank’s Corporate Communications Team, they rejected the email sent by a Cybernews journalist.
Recommendations
Here below, we have mentioned all the recommendations that the security analysts provide:-
It is recommended that cloud storage buckets be secured as much as possible to prevent such data leaks.
ICICI Bank must notify its customers of the data leak so they can minimize the risk and further damage that may occur.
Bank should directly guide all its users to report any suspicious activity immediately to ICICI Bank to identify and avoid fraudulent emails, websites, and calls.
Passwords must be changed, and vital login details should be created for those affected.
Make sure to enable 2-Factor authentication.
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T-Mobile has cemented itself as a pretty competitive carrier in the past decade. Offering plans that are cheaper than the competition, and in a lot of ways better. But even T-Mobile doesn’t just have a single plan, it has multiple plans that you can choose from. Each of which are great in their own right.
However, which one is going to be the best for you, and how you use your phone, and your lifestyle? That’s what we are here to determine. In this article, you’ll learn the best postpaid plan, the best plan for those do a lot of traveling, the best prepaid plan and the best MVNO that you can choose to use T-Mobile’s network.
Postpaid vs Prepaid vs MVNO
Before we get started, it’s important to talk about the differences between Postpaid, Prepaid and MVNO. Postpaid are customers that pay for their service after they have received it. That means your final bill will be larger than your first bill. Prepaid essentially means that you pay for your service before you receive it. And MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator, they essentially buy access to T-Mobile’s network at wholesale rates. Which is why it can be a lot cheaper than getting a postpaid plan.
When it comes to coverage, all three will offer the same coverage, if they are on the same network. The difference here is going to be in busy areas. On a network tower, Postpaid customers get priority, followed by prepaid customers. MVNO customers are at the very bottom, however a T-Mobile-owned MVNO may be a bit higher than other MVNO’s, as it’s still a T-Mobile company. Metro by T-Mobile is one that is owned by T-Mobile.
Smartphone selection is another difference here. While postpaid customers get access to almost all smartphones that are available, prepaid and MVNO’s have far fewer options for customers. They also usually do not offer any financing, so you’d need to go through a third-party, like Samsung (and buy unlocked).
Now that you know the difference between postpaid, prepaid and MVNO, let’s get started.
Best overall T-Mobile Plan: Go5G
Starting April 23, 2023, T-Mobile’s plans will move to the Go5G and Go5G Plus plans, with the Magenta and Magenta Max plans being online exclusives. However, the Go5G plans are a better value. So we have updated this post accordingly.
Go5G was announced on April 20, 2023, and while it is priced higher than the Magenta plan, it does include more. So this plan will be priced at $75 per month for a single line, $55 per line per month for two lines, $25 for three lines and four lines. These prices also include taxes and fees, which is really nice to see.
When it comes to data, Go5G does include 100GB of premium data. Which basically means that after you hit that 100GB of data, your data will likely be slowed. It also includes 15GB of high-speed data for the hotspot, and unlimited at 600Kbps. You’ll also get unlimited talk and text in Mexico and Canada and 10GB of high-speed data.
Now when it comes to the perks, you will get Netflix Basic on all family plans. As well as Apple TV+ for six months. Finally, for traveling, you’ll get 4 full-flight streaming sessions a year, and then unlimited 1 hour streaming and unlimited in-flight texting.
Go5G Plus is the best plan from T-Mobile for travelers, because it offers unlimited premium data, as well as more in-flight data. But let’s talk about pricing first. This one is going to cost you $90 for a single line. $60 per line for two lines, and $35 per line for three and four lines.
With Go5G Plus, you get unlimited premium data, that means you will never be slowed down, which is huge. When it comes to the mobile hotspot, you’re going to get 50GB of high-speed data, and then unlimited 600Kbps. In Mexico and Canada, you get unlimited talk and text, plus 15GB of high-speed data. And for other countries, you’ll get up to 5GB of high-speed data and unlimited text in 215 countries.
Now onto the perks. With Go5G Plus, you will get Netflix Basic on all single lines, or Netflix Standard on family plans. You also get Apple TV+ included. For flights, you will get full-flight texting and WiFi with streaming, where available.
Best T-Mobile Prepaid Plan: T-Mobile Connect 2.5GB
T-Mobile’s prepaid plans are super simple, and start at just $15, which is the plan we chose as their best prepaid plan. T-Mobile Connect 2.5GB will cost you $15 per month.
This plan is super simple, no real gotchas, or perks here. You get unlimited talk, text and data. With 2.5GB of high-speed data and then throttled afterwards. If you don’t use much data, are at home all the time, then this plan is going to be perfect.
T-Mobile Connect also has a 5.5GB plan for $25 per month.
For the best T-Mobile MVNO, what better than Metro by T-Mobile (formerly MetroPCS) which is of course owned by T-Mobile.
Metro by T-Mobile has plans that are as low as $30/month offering you unlimited talk, text and data, with 5GB of high-speed data.
You can get unlimited high-speed data from Metro by going with its $50 plan. That also gives you 15GB of hotspot data, and 100GB Google One Membership. It’s $60 plan gives you all that, plus Amazon Prime is included in the price.
