Cryptocurrency Scams Reaches $1.7Bn
Cryptocurrency scams and theft jumped 400% in 2018 to a staggering $1.7Bn. Of that $.17Bn, theft constituted about $950M of it. This is up 260% from the $266 in 2017. Most of the thefts occured in Korea and Japan. However, this surge surprised cryptoanalysts as the prices of the currencies declined. Currently, the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is down 80$ since January 2018.
In addition, reports say that people lost around $725M from scams. This is a huge increase to the $56M lost in 2017. In addition, most of the scams occurred in the first three quarters of the year. Fraud and inside jobs, however, dominated the last quarter.
China’s Bing Outage Reported As Technical Issue
Bing’s outage in China last week was a technical error, rather than an intentional censorship block. However, from a technical viewpoint, the site appeared to have been blocked in ways similar to other sites blocked by the government. Anyone attempting to access the page was redirected to an error page.
Both China and Microsoft refused to comment on the situation. The outage came a day after a widely read article by a Chinese journalist appeared online. This article criticized the quality of search results from Baidu Inc, the dominant domestic search engine. In turn, some internet users to speculate the two incidents were related.
Judge Denies Yahoo Data Breach Payout
A judge rejected Yahoo’s attempt to quiet a series of data breaches it experienced between 2013 and 2016. The firm proposed a payout to lawyers acting on behalf of the affected users. While the deal said the attorneys could claim up to $37.5M, it did not say the amount given to the victims. The California judge said Yahoo was being too vague about what remedial steps it was taking.
Zuckerberg To Integrate WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is planning to unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger services. He also plans to incorporate end-to-end encryption into these apps. The services will continue as three separate programs apps.
However, integrating the messaging services could make it harder for antitrust regulators to break up Facebook. With the acquisition of both WhatsApp and Instagram, the tech giant has a huge digital footprint.
China Deletes ‘Malicious’ Apps
China has deleted close to 8,000 ‘malicious’ mobile apps as reported by their digital watchdog on Thursday. They ordered the shutdown after finding the apps overcharged and cheated users as well as stolen information. In addition, The CAC said it deleted more than 7 million pieces of online information, as well as criticized a news app run by Tencent for spreading “vulgar and low-brow information.
