Senators want to protect online data with Data Care Act

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Senators want to protect online data with Data Care Act
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The US senators have reintroduced the Data Care Act to safeguard users’ online data. The bill was first introduced in 2018.

Lawmakers in the United States have brought tech companies under the radar to scrutinize their measures to protect users’ data. The US House Judiciary recently subpoenaed the Big Tech CEOs over censorship claims. Senator Brian Schatz from Hawaii is now reintroducing the Data Care Act to make websites, apps, and other online providers “reasonably secure” individual identifying data. Schatz is accompanied by 18 other senators.

According to the bill details, companies should notify users of data breaches, and they can’t also use the data in ways that harm users. Additionally, the third parties with whom the data is shared must treat the data with respect and care.

“Websites and apps that collect data from their users need to be protecting this data, not using it to harm them,” said Senator Schatz. “Doctors and lawyers are required to protect people’s data, and our bill will help ensure online companies aren’t exploiting it, either.”

Senators keep tech companies accountable over online data with Data Care Act

If rules are violated, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can impose a fine on both companies and third parties. Each state can also introduce civil enforcement actions, but FTC can intervene if needed.

The Data Care Act is a bipartisan bill, but it’s mostly supported by Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. The Democrats have the majority in the Senate and Republicans control the House. So, the Data Care Act. needs approvals from both sides. The bill also couldn’t come to a vote in 2018, but it’s more likely now to get a majority vote as lawmakers are more sensitive toward online data and privacy.

Both Democrats and Republicans seem to be in favor of bills that keep Big Tech accountable. Besides the American tech companies, foreign apps, like TikTok, have become a source of concern for lawmakers. The Senate has recently passed a bill that allows the White House to ban TikTok.


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Waze makes it easier to find EV charging stations on its map

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Waze makes it easier to find EV charging stations on its map
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Waze is adding new features to its navigation app almost every month. March is no exception to this unwritten rule, so if you own an electric vehicle, this month’s update has been specifically tailored for you. As the title says, Waze’s newly added feature makes finding charging stations for electric vehicles easier than ever before.Whether you’re using an Android or iOS device, starting today, you’ll be able to find relevant EV charging stations along your route. Despite saying that the feature will be available starting today, Waze also mentions that this will be rolled out globally over the coming weeks, so if you don’t see the option to find EV charging stations in your Waze app, give it some days and check again.

The latest Waze update is important because it adds up-to-date EV charging information to its map. More often than not, charging station information is not exactly accurate or it’s downright outdated and unreliable, making the navigation experience disappointing for many owners of electric vehicles.

According to Waze, in order to provide the most accurate information to the map, all EV data is reviewed and updated in real-time with the help of the local Map Editors from the community.
 

Most likely the new EV-related feature is now available in North America, so if you drive an electric vehicle, you can plug type into the Waze app to find all relevant EV charging stations along your route. As far as the accuracy goes, its Waze users who will decide how reliable the new feature truly is, but considering it’s curated by the community, it’s safe to say that it’s going to be updated in real time.

Here is hoping that the expansion of the new EV feature won’t take so many weeks as Waze suggests, especially since there are many electric cars in Europe and other regions of the world.


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Fake ChatGPT Chrome Extension with Thousands of Installs

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Fake ChatGPT Chrome Extension with Thousands of Installs
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Fake ChatGPT Chrome Extension

Guardio Labs discovered a Chrome Extension that promotes rapid access to fake ChatGPT functionality capable of stealing Facebook accounts and establishing hidden account backdoors.

Using a maliciously imposed Facebook app “backdoor” that grants the threat actors super-admin powers stands out.

“By hijacking high-profile Facebook business accounts, the threat actor creates an elite army of Facebook bots and a malicious paid media apparatus,” Guardio Labs reports.

“This allows it to push Facebook paid ads at the expense of its victims in a self-propagating worm-like manner.”

EHA

Tactics Employed By This Powerful Stealer

The Guardio Labs research team discovered a new version of the malicious fake ChatGPT browser extension. This time, it has been updated with a frightening method to take control of your Facebook accounts and a sophisticated worm-like way for spreading.

On Facebook-sponsored posts, the malicious stealer extension dubbed “Quick access to Chat GPT” is advertised as a fast way to launch ChatGPT straight from your browser.

https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*dk6Oz-DYOQPUhODIZTIVAA.png
Malicious Sponsored Posts on Facebook leading to the Malicious “FakeGPT” extension

Reports say although the extension gives you that (by merely connecting to the official ChatGPT’s API), it also gathers all the data it can from your browser, steals cookies from allowed active sessions to any service you have, and uses targeted methods to take over your Facebook account.

Using two fake Facebook applications, portal and msg kig, backdoor access is maintained, and complete control of the target profiles is attained. Adding apps to Facebook accounts is a fully automated procedure.

Threat Actor Uses 2 Main Apps

“With this approach, the campaign can continue propagating with its army of hijacked Facebook bot accounts, publishing more sponsored posts and other social activities on behalf of its victim’s profiles and spending business account money credits!” Guardio Labs.

https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*N_117h-kpxFLRgfzxPP6MA.png
From malvertising, extension installation, hijacking Facebook accounts, and back again to propagation

After you click on the extension icon after it has been installed, a small popup window with a prompt to ask ChatGPT whatever you want appears. This is precisely what the extension promises.

As a result, it can send any request to any other service, just as if the browser owner were the one requesting the first place. This is important since, in most circumstances, the browser already has an active and authenticated session with nearly all your daily services, such as Facebook.

This enables the extension to utilize Meta’s Graph API for developers, giving the threat actor rapid access to your details and the ability to perform activities on your behalf from within your Facebook account via straightforward API calls.

“Not only this malicious extension is free-roaming on the official Chrome store, but it is also abusing Facebook’s official applications API in a way that should have triggered policy enforcers’ attention already,” Guardio Labs.

Reports state that since its appearance on March 3, 2023, this extension has been installed by more than 2000 users daily. As a result, each person has their Facebook account stolen. However, this is likely not the only harm.

The extension has since been removed from Chrome’s store due to Guardio’s Google report on this malicious extension.

Hence, we need to be more cautious even when doing regular, casual browsing. For example, avoid clicking on the first search result, and always be careful to only click on sponsored links and posts if you are confident of their source.

Network Security Checklist – Download Free E-Book

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Google Reminders are finally becoming Tasks

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Google Reminders are finally becoming Tasks
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Google is no stranger to having redundant products. The company has had its Assistant Reminders along with its Tasks for the longest time, and they both serve a similar purpose. Well, the company is finally making the transition from Google Reminders to Tasks.

This is something that the tech community has been complaining about for a while. Google Tasks is a useful To-Do app that syncs with the Google Calendar. Google Assistant Reminders also sync with your Calendar, and you can set them by using your voice.

It’s a bit weird and cumbersome having both services, especially if you use both of them. Also, you can’t set Tasks using Google Assistant. So, if you’re an avid Google Tasks user, you can’t simply ask the Assistant to set them for you.

That’s also annoying because Google Tasks has a much better interface for quickly making and managing items. Getting to your Reminders requires you going through the Google App and accessing the main menu.

However, Google did take a step in the right direction. It allows people to import their Reminders as Tasks. This helped a lot of people who didn’t feel like having two collections of items to keep track of.

Google is ditching Reminders for Tasks

Back in September 2022, Google announced that it would consolidate these two services, and it looks like that day is finally coming. The company started the transition from Reminders to Tasks. It’s rolling out now, so there’s a chance that you won’t see the update just yet.

Artem Russakovskii posted a tweet telling us all about this transition. After you get the update, you’ll see a popup telling you that you’ll be able to see your Reminders in Tasks. You’ll then see two buttons. One will show you how Tasks works, in case you haven’t used it before, and the other one will start the move.

This will transfer all of your Reminders over to Tasks. When it makes the transfer, all of your completed Reminders will be completed Tasks.

After the move, the Reminders function will disappear from Google Assistant. From then on, when you want it to remind you about something, it will automatically set a Task.


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Samsung ropes in former TSMC semiconductor engineer

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Samsung ropes in former TSMC semiconductor engineer
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Samsung has reportedly hired a veteran semiconductor engineer who worked for its foundry arch-rival TSMC for almost two decades. Lin Jun-cheng will serve the Korean firm as the senior vice president of the advanced semiconductor packaging team. He will oversee the development of cutting-edge packaging technology.

According to the Korean media, Lin is an expert in semiconductor packaging. He has an experience of more than 20 years in this field. He worked for TSMC from 1999 to 2017 and is credited to have played a pivotal role in laying the groundwork for 3D packaging technology, something the Taiwanese firm currently excels at. Lin and orchestrated the company’s applications for more than 450 patents in the US.

Before joining TSMC in 1999, Lin worked for Micron Technology, a Utah-based semiconductor firm that specializes in memory chips. And after leaving the Taiwanese company in 2017, he joined Taiwanese semiconductor equipment maker Skytech as the new CEO. He accumulated further experience in the field of packaging equipment there. The veteran engineer is now bringing this treasure of knowledge and experience to Samsung, which has been exploring ways to get its semiconductor business on track lately.

Samsung hires a veteran semiconductor engineer

Samsung’s semiconductor efforts haven’t been bearing the desired fruits lately. Over the past few months, the company has lost several major clients to TSMC in the foundry sector. Qualcomm, Tesla, and many others have switched to the Taiwanese firm for the manufacturing of their future chipsets. Even its mobile division has ditched its flagship Exynos processors in favor of TSMC-made Snapdragon chipsets.

The Korean behemoth is now trying to resurrect its degrading reputation by making strategic investments across the semiconductor business. It has erected a new factory in Texas, US to expand its production capacity. Samsung also switched from the FinFET chip fabrication process to the GAAFET process for its 3nm chips. Packaging technology is critical to the overall performance of semiconductors. The company is giving thoughtful importance to this part of the business as well.

Last year, Samsung formed a new task force for the development of advanced packaging solutions under the watchful eyes of co-CEO Kyung Kye-hyun. Now known as the Advanced Packaging Business Team, this team is currently led by vice president Kang Moon-soo. Lin Jun-cheng has now joined in as another experienced leader. Samsung also recently hired Kim Woo-pyung from Apple to lead its US Packaging Solution Center and a senior developer from AMD to oversee the development of custom CPUs.


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Pixel 7 may not save some of your photos thanks to a camera bug

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Pixel 7 may not save some of your photos thanks to a camera bug
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A new Pixel 7 camera bug has been discovered, which will make the phone fail to save some of your photos. This goes for both the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, by the way.

The Pixel 7 has problems saving some photos due to a camera bug

Both phones seem to be refusing to save close-up zoom shots, at least for some users. A Reddit user that goes by the name ‘MintySkyhawk’ shared a video showing the issue. He took a photo of the internals of his PC using the 5x periscope lens with the flash turned on. The phone took the picture, but it didn’t save it.

Another Redditor did a similar test. He took a close-up image of his jeans, using 5x zoom and flash, and he got the same results. The phone refused to save the photo. It seems to be a common occurrence.

Android Police says that it seems to be happening on the latest Android 13 QPR2 build, and the Android 14 DP2 build. All phones seem to be running the Google Camera version 8.7.250.494820638.44.

There is a problem with the Google Camera app

Now, it seems to be a Google Camera issue, more than anything else. It also seems to be happening only when you are taking a close-up photo in low light conditions with the zoom level between 2-5x.

Some Redditors decided to dig deeper, and pulled a logcat while using the Google Camera app. As expected, it seems to be a glitch within the app. The problem occurs due to HDR bugging out.

The latest Pixel Feature Drop probably didn’t fix the issue, even though some camera improvements were issued. We’ll have to wait and see. This is a very odd bug, though, and Pixel phones have, unfortunately, became quite familiar with such bugs. A recent bug with YouTube video crashing and rebooting devices was also a head-scratcher.


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Details on the Nothing Ear (2) arrive ahead of their launch

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Details on the Nothing Ear (2) arrive ahead of their launch
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Over the past few months, rumors of the soon-to-launch Nothing Ear (2) have been making the rounds. Finally, the expected launch of this pair of wireless earbuds has been verified. What seem to be promotional images of this product have finally made their way to the internet.

These images show off the design of this pair of earbuds from the casing to the earbuds themselves. They also show the earbuds and give an idea of how they would fit a user. But there are some factors to take to mind with the rendering design of the coming Nothing Ear (2) earbuds.

Nothing’s product designs are unique and stand out from the crowd. The available renders and promotional images prove true to this fact. Still, there are some traits from the current Ear (1) that the coming earbuds might launch with.

The Nothing Ear (2) borrow a thing or two from the design of their predecessors

The design of the coming Nothing Ear (2) is quite similar to that of their predecessors. There are little changes in terms of how the earbuds look as shown from the available images. Even the design of the earbud’s case is similar to that of the Nothing Ear (1).

Nothing will stick to its see-through design on the Nothing Ear (2) as it does with its products. This will help attract more customers within the tech-savvy community to try out this product. But if there are little or no changes in the earbud’s design, then how does Nothing intend to attract buyers?

Well, they will do this by focusing more on the specifications of this coming product. When it comes to their specifications, there will be some significant improvements in comparison with their predecessors. According to the available information, the coming earbuds from Nothing will be 0.2g lighter than their predecessors.

The Nothing Ear (1) weighed 4.7g, so their successors will weigh 4.5g, making them a bit more comfortable to use. In terms of battery capacity, there is no change in the 6-hour battery life from the Nothing Ear (1).

But, the Nothing Ear (2) case will have a 36-hour battery life on a single charge. This is in comparison with the 34-hour battery life of the existing earbuds from Nothing.

Features like Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) will be available with the Ear (2). There would also be a few other audio enhancement features to help improve the overall user experience. Sources claim that the Nothing Ear (2) will retail at the same price as the current model, being $149.


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A week in security (Mar 6

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A week in security (Mar 6
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The most interesting security related news from the week of March 6 to 12.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

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Galaxy S23 Ultra has the best battery life in the flagship segment: DXOMARK

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Galaxy S23 Ultra has the best battery life in the flagship segment: DXOMARK
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The battery life of Samsung‘s Galaxy S23 Ultra has been insanely good from day one. During our review of the phone, we could get almost ten hours of screen-on time on a single charge. Over the past one and a half month, it has only got better in battery management. And that has been validated by DXOMARK. The publication recently put the Galaxy S23 Ultra through its rigorous battery test suite and the device came out with flying colors. The new Samsung flagship offered the best battery performance of any premium Android smartphone or iPhone ever.

Galaxy S23 Ultra’s battery performance is undefeated in the premium segment

During their testing, DXOMARK found that the 5,000mAh battery inside the Galaxy S23 Ultra could keep the phone running for up to two days and 19 hours on a single charge on moderate usage. The phone lost less than two percent of battery charger per night on average. It charged from 0 to 100 percent in one hour and 21 minutes (two hours and 18 minutes on wireless charging), while a 0 to 80 percent charge took 37 minutes. Just five minutes of charging was enough to keep the phone on for more than five hours.

The only notable problem that DXOMARK found on the Galaxy S23 Ultra is the battery level collapsing as soon as it reaches five percent. This is something users need to be wary of. The publication also noted that the phone’s battery consumption when using the camera or listening to music is slightly on the higher side than average. High residual consumption of the wireless stand is another con, but that’s nothing major.

Overall, the Galaxy S23 Ultra achieved a score of 142 in DXOMARK’s battery test. It leapfrogged the Asus ROG Phone 6 (140) to sit atop the chart for premium models. The latter is a dedicated gaming smartphone with a massive 6000mAh battery. Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro Max is in the third spot with a score of 136. The 2021 maxed-out iPhone model has a 4352mAh battery. Its successor iPhone 14 Pro Max also packs an identical 4323mAh battery but could only achieve a score of 133 to sit in the fourth spot. The iPhone 14 Plus makes up the top five.

The latest Samsung flagship leaves the 2022 model in the dust

What makes the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s battery life more special is the improvement over its predecessor. DXOMARK placed the Galaxy S22 Ultra in the 17th spot in its chart with a score of just 103. Samsung switching to TSMC-made Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor for the latest flagship made the difference this year. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 powering the 2022 models in the US (used in the DXOMARK test) was manufactured by the Korean brand. Qualcomm switched to TSMC for the new chips because of power-efficiency issues with Samsung’s fabrication process.

In the all-time global list, which also includes budget and mid-range models, the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s score of 142 puts it in the sixth spot. Honor’s Magic 5 Lite 5G tops the chart with a score of 152. You can find DXOMARK’s detailed battery test report for the latest Samsung flagship here.


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Bally Sports is losing rights to the Diamondbacks, Reds, Guardians and Padres

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Bally Sports is losing rights to the Diamondbacks, Reds, Guardians and Padres
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While Bally Sports’ parent-company, Diamond Sports Group, is expected to file for bankruptcy this week, we’re already learning that they have given up their rights to four teams. Those teams include the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians and San Diego Padres.

The reason why Diamond Sports Group is giving up these contracts for these four teams, is that they would be paying more to the teams then they would make on advertising and cable contracts. Making it not worth it to keep them.

A few weeks ago, it was reported the DSG had already decided not to pay an interest payment of $140 million. Which forced them into the 30-day grace period before they would need to file for bankruptcy. That grace period ends this week, so we should know soon what they plan to do.

Where can I watch these games now?

The MLB has said that it will offer the streams for these games for free on MLB.TV this season. Which makes MLB.TV a bit more interesting now.

Typically, MLB.TV is a streaming service to watch out-of-market games. But since the Diamondbacks, Reds, Guardians and Padres won’t be broadcast in-market, MLB.TV will be the only option and will be broadcasting in market. This is seen as a temporary solution for these teams. As the MLB does need to renegotiate its contracts for in-market games with different providers across the league.

But the good news is, these games will be broadcast for free, within MLB.TV.

For now, Diamond Sports Group and Bally Sports holds the rights to 10 MLB teams, as well as 16 NBA teams and 12 NHL teams. The MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred did say that if DSG missed the rights payment window for even one of their teams, they would terminate all rights contracts. So it’s possible that Bally Sports could lose the remaining 10 MLB teams.

It’s nowhere near the end of the road for DSG either. As they also have carriage contracts expiring with Comcast and DIRECTV this fall. They will likely want to pay DSG less to carry Bally Sports, or even the same amount they are currently paying. Of course, Bally Sports will want more money, as regional sports is quite pricey.


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