By Joao Fellet and Charlotte Pamment BBC Brasil Climate change Facebook says it will begin clamping down on the illegal sale of protected areas of the Amazon rainforest on its site. The social media giant changed its policy following a BBC investigation into the practice. The new measures will apply only to conservation areas […]
Social media services Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are back up and running after an outage that lasted almost six hours, Facebook says. The company says the cause was a faulty configuration change. All three services are owned by Facebook and could not be accessed over the web or on smartphone apps. Downdetector, which tracks outages, […]
By Cristina Criddle Technology reporter Facebook has defended the impact of its products, saying Instagram has “affirmatively helped” young people. Its global head of safety, Antigone Davis, testified to the US Senate, about child protection. It comes after a leak exposed how Instagram’s own research had found the platform could harm children’s well-being. Previously, Instagram […]
Gaming giant Activision Blizzard has settled a sexual harassment case brought by a US federal employment watchdog for $18m (£13.2m). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had also accused the game company of sexual discrimination. It was one of a number of such allegations against the firm, which is also facing a case filed by […]
PayPal is introducing new fees for payments between businesses in the UK and those in Europe, from November. British businesses will be charged a 1.29% fee for payments from the European Economic Area and vice versa. Most currently pay about 0.5% in similar charges, which have remained unchanged since before the UK left the EU customs union […]
By Joe Tidy Cyber reporter El Salvador has become the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender in a move that has got the nation and the world debating the opportunities and dangers of cryptocurrency. From today, businesses will be obliged where possible to accept the controversial digital coins as payment. Millions of people […]
Author Sir Salman Rushdie will serialise his next book on publishing platform Substack. The platform proposed the idea which will see the book, and other writing, delivered to subscribers’ emails. In a post, Sir Salman said he hoped to have “a closer relationship with readers, to speak freely, without any intermediaries or gatekeepers”. Substack began […]
WhatsApp has been fined €225m (£193m) by Ireland’s data watchdog for breaching privacy regulations. It is the largest fine ever from the Irish Data Protection Commission, and the second-highest under EU GDPR rules. Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, has its EU headquarters is in Ireland, and the Irish regulator is the lead authority for the tech […]
Online gamers under the age of 18 will only be allowed to play for an hour on Fridays, weekends and holidays, China’s video game regulator has said. The National Press and Publication Administration told state-run news agency Xinhua that game-playing would be only allowed between 8pm to 9pm. It also instructed gaming companies to prevent […]
By Joe Tidy Cyber reporter Taxi driver Chris is obsessively checking his phone for updates. “I’m set to lose almost 2,500 euros (£2,100) worth of cryptocurrency coins,” he says. Chris describes himself as “a small crypto-holder from Austria” and is one of many victims of a hack attack on cryptocurrency exchange Liquid Global last week. The […]
