The U.S. Army was holding fake Twitch draws to recruit young people

Twitch has forced the military to withdraw the deception, but they have a promotional agreement with them.

The U.S. military has a channel on Twitch to promote its eSports team, which is part of an initiative to attract the country's young people to a career in the military. However, the promotion has gotten out of hand: Twitch has threatened the military with the closure of its channel after detecting them conducting a fake raffle with non-existent prizes that served to redirect unwary young people to a form for enlistment.

The strategy was to promise prizes that did not exist, such as commands and other peripherals, to get the data of young people with a system that led them to sign a document that committed them to be recruited, according to The Nation.

Several adult users became aware of the deception and began to publicly point out the practice. The fake promotions were made in the Twitch chat room. The promotion promised a prize draw for an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, but the links actually sent the user to a recruiting page where there was no reference to any kind of draw, prizes, or any of the information that should be in a supposed draw. It was simply the page to sign up, camouflaged to deceive the user

Following public pressure, Twitch has forced the US military to cease these activities. "According to our terms of use, promotions at Twitch must comply with all applicable laws," the company said in a statement to Kotaku. "This promotion did not comply with our regulations and we have requested that it be withdrawn.

The military has not taken a position on this apparent deception aimed at young people, but the truth is that in the United States there has been a sharp increase in military advertising on the platform as it has become one of the official sponsors of Twitch Rivals, the company's channel. It is not known what the cost of this advertising contract has been, but it could be millions according to some sources consulted by Kotaku.

This has caused many users to start trolling the army channel asking them about war crimes committed by the U.S. and there are even groups competing to see who gets kicked out fastest on both Twitch and Discord.


Translated using deepl from:
https://vandal.elespanol.com/noticia/1350736282/el-ejercito-estadounidense-hacia-falsos-sorteos-en-twitch-para-reclutar-jovenes


#twitch #military #army #usa #gov #propaganda

The US Military Is Using Online Gaming to Recruit Teens
Gamers with the Army, Navy, and Air Force are spending hours on Twitch with children as young as 13.

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/military-recruitment-twitch
or
http://telegra.ph/The-US-Military-Is-Using-Online-Gaming-to-Recruit-Teens-07-20


https://nitter.net/MANvsGAME/status/1283597384665055233

https://nitter.net/NotBrunoAgain/status/1283468983962828801

The day you've all been waiting for has arrived. OrangeFox Recovery R11.0 is released!

You can check updated devices in @OrangeFoxUpdates channel and download from https://orangefox.download.

Other devices will be updated after full beta testing. We ask you be patient and wait if your device isn't updated to R11.0 yet. Please don't ask for whether (or when) R11.0 will be released.

The sources for R11.0 are opened and buildable, check out @OrangeFoxBuilding

HSE donates contact tracing app to global public health project

‘Covid Green’ one of two projects selected for Linux Foundation Public Health

Ireland has donated the code for its contact tracing app to the Linux Foundation Public Health initiative as part of an attempt to suppress the coronavirus pandemic globally.

The Health Services Executive confirmed it had donated the code to the newly established foundation on Monday, as one of the first two open source projects to help fight Covid-19.

The app, which was developed by Nearform for the HSE, has been downloaded more than 1.3 million times since its launch earlier this month, and the source code has also been used to build contact tracing apps for Northern Ireland and Gibraltar, along with other countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the US.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/hse-donates-contact-tracing-app-to-global-public-health-project-1.4308955

#ireland #linux

Government admits breaking privacy law with NHS test and trace

Ministers accused of reckless behaviour over roll-out, with Guardian learning of data breaches

The UK government broke the law in rolling out its test-and-trace programme without a full assessment of the privacy implications, the Department of Health and Social Care has admitted after a legal challenge.

The Guardian can reveal the programme has already led to three data breaches involving email mishaps and unredacted personal information being shared in training materials.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/20/uk-government-admits-breaking-privacy-law-with-test-and-trace-contact-tracing-data-breaches-coronavirus

#uk #privacy

Microsoft President Met With U.S. Antitrust Committee Investigating Apple and Expressed Concerns Over App Store

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are all set to participate in an antitrust hearing next Monday held by the United States House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee as part of an ongoing antitrust investigation on competition in digital markets.

Ahead of the hearing, the committee spoke with Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith, with The Information sharing details on the virtual meeting.

The committee wanted to talk with Smith so he could "provide Microsoft's perspective as a big tech company" formerly involved in antitrust regulation over Windows, but Smith also reportedly shared Microsoft's concerns with the way Apple operates the App Store.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/20/microsoft-antitrust-committee-apple-app-store/

#apple #antitrust

Messenger service: BKA can also read your WhatsApp

Encrypted communication poses major problems for the security authorities. According to research by WDR and BR, however, the BKA has long been able to read chats via WhatsApp - via a regular function.

Only with a great deal of effort, such as the use of state spy software, the so-called "state Trojan", encrypted chats can be monitored by criminals - this is what the security authorities used to say. Monitoring communications via messenger services such as WhatsApp is one of the greatest challenges for law enforcement agencies, he says. Since the providers of the programs do not allow the authorities to read them secretly, they are in fact forced to use spy software.

According to research by BR and WDR, however, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has been able to monitor communications via WhatsApp for several years - even without having to install monitoring software on the target person's mobile phone.

Regular WhatsApp function used
According to this, the BKA department "Information Technology Surveillance" (OE 24) has apparently found a way to access encrypted WhatsApp chats. "The BKA has a method that can make it possible to trace text, video, image and voice short messages from a WhatsApp account in real time," according to an internal letter from the police authority. The WhatsApp contacts of a target person could also be "made public" in this way.

Apparently, investigators are using the possibility that WhatsApp can also be controlled via the Internet browser. This function is called "WhatsApp Web". It is a regular function, as the investigators emphasize in their letter. However, in order to be able to perform such an action, the investigators must have temporary access to the target's mobile phone and then synchronize the chats with the WhatsApp browser version. Only then can the investigators read along unnoticed.

In the opinion of the BKA, this method is surveillance in accordance with Section 100a of the Code of Criminal Procedure - i.e. regular telecommunications surveillance with a court order. Although chat histories can be read extensively, this is not surveillance as for example through the use of the so-called state Trojan.

👀 🇩🇪 👉🏼 https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/bka-whatsapp-101.html

#wa #DeleteWhatsApp #germany #BKA #thinkabout
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📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag

Chinese artist holds his tongue in protest of pandemic censorship

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - To protest censorship during the COVID-19 outbreak, a Chinese artist known as Brother Nut kept his mouth shut for 30 days, using metal clasps, gloves, duct tape and other items.

In the project - #shutupfor30days - he also sealed his mouth with packing tape with “404”, the error code for a webpage not found, written across it, a nod to the blocking of online content that is common in China for sensitive issues.

“If you ask me how an artist should digest unfair treatment, such as violence or censorship, my first reaction is: keep fighting, with art,” said Brother Nut.

The 39-year-old artist has built a reputation for statement-making projects in a country where the room for dissent has shrunk and censorship has intensified under President Xi Jinping.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-art/chinese-artist-holds-his-tongue-in-protest-of-pandemic-censorship-idUSKCN24L0HJ

#china #censorship #protest

Google Promises Privacy With Virus App but Can Still Collect Location Data

Some government agencies that use the software said they were surprised that Google may pick up the locations of certain app users. Others said they had unsuccessfully pushed Google to make a change.

When Google and Apple announced plans in April for free software to help alert people of their possible exposure to the coronavirus, the companies promoted it as “privacy preserving” and said it would not track users’ locations. Encouraged by those guarantees, Germany, Switzerland and other countries used the code to develop national virus alert apps that have been downloaded more than 20 million times.

But for the apps to work on smartphones with Google’s Android operating system — the most popular in the world — users must first turn on the device location setting, which enables GPS and may allow Google to determine their locations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/technology/google-covid-tracker-app.html

#google #privacy

Anti-Piracy Groups Mull “Know Your Customer” Proposal to Tackle Pirate Sites

Anti-piracy groups and rightsholders in Europe are reportedly interested in a so-called "Know Your Customer" proposal to tackle pirate sites. In the finance world, companies are required to know exactly who their clients are to prevent money laundering but what if this stretched to domain, hosting and cloud storage companies too?

Shadow ManMost adults seeking to do any kind of business with banks, financial entities or even gambling companies will have experienced efforts to positively identify who they are.

So-called ‘Know Your Customer’ regulations require that companies, mostly in the financial sector, carry out checks to determine that the individuals they are dealing with are actually who they say they. Such verification is usually carried out when an account is opened but can be revisited thereafter, with the provision of ID cards, passports, driving licenses, and even face verification becoming a condition for business.

https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-groups-mull-know-your-customer-proposal-to-tackle-pirate-sites-200719/

#europe #piracy

Pakistan warns TikTok video service, blocks Bigo Live app

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan has threatened China’s TikTok and blocked the Singapore-based Bigo Live streaming platform, citing what the regulating authority called widespread complaints about “immoral, obscene and vulgar” content on the apps.

The move was promptly decried by Pakistani rights activists who saw it as a potential precursor to an even greater censorship in this conservative Muslim nation.

In a statement, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said the content on the two platforms could have “extremely negative effects on the society in general and youth in particular,” without elaborating.

https://apnews.com/2da0cf781bd4ecc15ef060f1e91ee5bf

#asia #pakistan #tiktok #bigolive

Elon Musk Says His Neuralink Chip Will Let You Stream Music [and ads?] To Your Brain

Elon Musk has said his new Neuralink brain chip will allow users to listen to music by sending it directly to their brain.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss has set out on his new venture, which involves a brain-computer interface which will have a number of functions.

Neuralink is his new tech start up, and he's drip-fed us some information on Twitter over recent days.

When replying to computer scientist Austin Howard, Musk confirmed that the technology he is working on will allow people to 'listen to music directly from our [Neuralink brain] chips'.

https://www.ladbible.com/news/technology-elon-musk-says-his-neuralink-chip-lets-you-stream-music-to-your-brain-20200720

Malware found in Chinese tax software

Company tries to cover up tracks of GoldenSpy backdoor.

Tax software required to conduct business in China has been installing malware on enterprise systems and trying to evade detection, according to cybersecurity researchers.

The team at Trustwave has been monitoring the malware campaign which they originally found on the systems of one of its clients.

“They informed us that upon opening operations in China, their local Chinese bank required that they install a software package called Intelligent Tax produced by the Golden Tax Department of Aisino Corporation, for paying local taxes,” researcher Brian Hussey said.

“As we continued our investigation into the tax software, we found that it worked as advertised.

“But it also installed a hidden backdoor on the system that enabled a remote adversary to execute Windows commands or to upload and execute any binary.”

https://ia.acs.org.au/content/ia/article/2020/malware-found-in-chinese-tax-software.html?ref=newsletter

#australia #malware

Contact Tracing App Privacy: What Data Is SharedBy Europe’s GAEN Contact Tracing Apps

The study "Contact Tracing App Privacy: What Data Is SharedBy Europe's GAEN Contact Tracing Apps" shows every Android user (once again) how openly and extensively Google spies on its users. Current versions of Google Play Services (and probably older ones as well) send the following information to Google every 20 minutes:

* IP address
* IMEI of the device
* Hardware serial number
* SIM card serial number
* Phone number
* e-mail address
* User statistics of Apps

👀 👉🏼 https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/contact_tracing_app_traffic.pdf

#google #DeleteGoogle #privacy #thinkabout #why #pdf
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag

Open Letter to the U.S.-based Members of the Facebook Oversight Board

TO: Evelyn Aswad, Jamal Greene, Pamela Karlan, Michael McConnell and John Samples

RE: Urgent content issues undermining our democracy

Distinguished Members of the Facebook Oversight Board,

We are writing to express concern about recent developments that underscore the severity of the threat Facebook poses to democracy and the brazenness of their disempowerment of the Oversight Board as a necessary check. We urge you to either demand the Board be given real authority to act now, or publicly step down.

On July 7, 2020, it was announced that the Oversight Board will not be operational until ‘“late Fall” –– the latest and clearest indication to date that Facebook has intentionally sidelined the Board until after the high-stakes 2020 elections. After repeatedly claiming the Board would be up and running by 2019, Facebook pushed the launch date back to early 2020, then to spring, then to summer, and now to late fall.

This news is especially alarming given the release of Facebook’s internal civil rights audit on July 8, which makes clear that the platform is actively facilitating voter suppression, magnifying rampant election disinformation, and seeding hate. Auditors were left “deeply concerned” and unable to understand “why Facebook has allowed misrepresentations of methods of voting that undermine Facebook’s protection and promotion of this crucial form of free expression.” And those concerns were clearly well-founded, as a July 16 ProPublica report found nearly half of all top-performing Facebook posts mentioning vote-by-mail since April have been false or misleading.

Moreover, the civil rights audit specifically notes that the Oversight Board’s narrowly crafted jurisdiction “makes it impossible” for the Board to meaningfully review election-related content. This deficiency, according to the Auditors, has the potential to “impact the very operation of our democratic process.” In turn, they advocate for far-reaching changes to that policy –– changes that would similarly fall outside of the Board’s purview. The same goes for the recently unearthed climate loophole that Facebook created to enable climate deniers to peddle dangerous lies under the guise of “opinion” and evade fact-checking.

These revelations arose the same week that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg convened with – and roundly dismissed recommendations from – civil rights leaders. Those leaders painted their meeting as a Facebook public relations stunt. Taken together, it’s hard to see all of this as anything more than that.

👀 👉🏼 https://accountabletech.org/media/oversightboardletter/

👀 👉🏼 https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/20/facebook-oversight-board-letter-accountable-tech

#DeleteFacebook
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag

Microsoft accused of sharing data of Office 365 business subscribers with Facebook and its app devs

Microsoft is being sued for allegedly sharing its Office 365 customers' business data with Facebook app developers, partners, and subcontractors in violation of its data privacy promises.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in San Francisco, on behalf of plaintiffs Frank Russo, Koonan Litigation Consulting, and Sumner Davenport & Associates, all Office 365 customers.

The complaint says that – while Microsoft has repeatedly promised its business customers that it would only use their data to provide purchased services, that it would share their data with subcontractors only on a need-to-know basis, and that it will never share their data with third-parties – those claims are false.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/microsoft_office_data_facebook/

#microsoft #facebook #privacy

Most Dedicated VPN IP-addresses Are Not Anonymous

Many VPN services advertise themselves as ideal tools to offer security, privacy, and anonymity. To ensure the latter, they often have no-logging policies to prevent individual users from being exposed. However, this is not necessarily true for the small group that use dedicated or static IP-addresses.

Millions of Internet users around the world use a VPN to protect their privacy online.

Another key benefit is that VPNs hide users’ true IP-address, making them more anonymous. This prevents third-party monitoring outfits from unwanted snooping.

Every year we ask VPN providers about their logging policies to confirm that they can’t connect a VPN IP-address to a specific user. In the past, we have seen that this is not always the case.

https://torrentfreak.com/most-dedicated-vpn-ip-addresses-are-not-anonymous-200719/

#vpn #privacy

Tech Firms Begin to Abandon Hong Kong Over Security Law

China’s sweeping national security law has forced technology firms to reconsider their presence in Hong Kong. The nimblest among them -- the city’s startups -- are already moving data and people out or are devising plans to do so.

Beijing’s polarizing law, which took effect this month, upended Hong Kong’s tech scene just as it seemed on a path to becoming a regional hub. Entrepreneurs now face a wave of concern from overseas clients and suppliers about the implications of running data and internet services under the law’s new regime of vastly expanded online policing powers. Many are making contingency plans and restructuring their operations away from Hong Kong.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-20/tech-firms-begin-to-abandon-hong-kong-because-of-security-law

#asia #hongkong #surveillance

Send in your ideas. Deadline August 1st 2020 12:00 CET (noon)

Submit your proposal for grant funding of 5,000-50,000€ from NLnet Foundation.

Do you have a valuable idea in the area of networking and internet technology, privacy and trust enhancing technologies or search and discovery? And are you looking for financial means to make your ideas come to life? Or do you have an existing project that requires additional means to enable further development? Then submit your proposal to NLnet foundation before the next following deadline and see if we can help you.

We put any money we can get our hands on where our mouth is: that is to increase the use of open technologies for society. What is important for us is that the technology you develop or help promote is usable for others and has the potential for real impact.

https://nlnet.nl/news/2020/20200601-call.html

current projects

The looming disaster of immunity passports and digital identity

A digital ID that proves immunity will raise serious human rights issues. And the failure of the digital ID industry to deal with the issues of exclusion, exploitation and discrimination puts the entire industry under question.

👀 Key findings 👀

👉🏼 'Immunity passports' are a theoretical credential - most likely digital - that someone can prove that they have either had the virus and recovered, or have had a vaccination.

👉🏼 Immunity passports are being hyped as a solution to ending lockdowns around the world by actors including the proponents of digital identity; the digital identity industry; think-tanks; and the travel industry.

👉🏼 Yet there is currently no scientific basis for these measures, as highlighted by the WHO. The nature of what information would be held on an immunity passport is currently unknown.

👉🏼 The social risks of immunity passports are great: it serves as a route to discrimination and exclusion, particularly if the powers to view these passports falls on people's employers, or the police.

👉🏼 The digital identity industry - pushing their own products as immunity passport solutions - is failing to protect against these harms: they are interested in building wider digital identity systems, based on their pre-existing models, rather than developing a genuine solution to the risks of these passports.

Immunity Passports have become a much hyped tool to cope with this pandemic and the economic crisis. Essentially, with immunity passports those who are 'immune' to the virus would have some kind of certified document - whether physical or digital. This 'passport' would give them rights and privileges that other members of the community do not have.

👀 👉🏼 read more:
https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4074/looming-disaster-immunity-passports-and-digital-identity

#privacyinternational #immunity #passports #digital #identity #thinkabout #why
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
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📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag

App Manager v2.5.9

- [Feature] Merged App Info as a single tab in App Details
- [Feature] Added option to reset all app ops
- [Feature] Added option to revoke all dangerous app ops/permissions
- [Feature] Highlight trackers in the component tabs
- [Feature] Added option to save manifest and class dump
- [Feature] Added the ability to grant/revoke development permissions
- [Feature] Added sorting options for components, app ops and uses permissions tabs
- [Feature] Added sort by wifi usage in the App Usage window
- [Feature] Added launch button in the App Info tab
- [Feature] Added never ask option to usage status prompt
- [Feature] Added long click to select apps in the main window
- [Feature] Added changelog within the app
- [Fix] Click to select apps during selection mode
- [Fix] Improved manifest loading for large apps
- [Fix] Get real activity name for activities that use activity-alias
- [Fix] Fixed background colors
- [Fix] Fixed crashing when loading the services tab for non-root users