Tech Roundup: Ring Security Camera Privacy Concerns, Samsung Galaxy S10 Event & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

1. U.K. goes ahead with new plans that mandates online users to hand over credit card details or scans of government-issued IDs while visiting porn websites and verify they are above 18; ISPs to block websites that fail to fail to comply with appropriate AV (age verification) requirements.
2. U.S. Cellphone carriers like T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are found selling access to their customers' real-time location data to a complex web of third-parties and other unauthorised parties, reigniting the debate over privacy and user consent.
• The story, revealed first by Motherboard, showed how easy (and accurately) it was to track users' location by paying as low as US$ 300 to a bounty hunter, who employed phone location services offered by a company called Microbilt that obtained location information from another location aggregator company named Zumigo, which in turn secured the data from T-Mobile, the network the phone number originated from.
• Sprint and T-Mobile confirm they have terminated contracts with Zumigo, AT&T says it had stopped partnering with "most" location aggregation services last year and that it's in the process of terminating the remaining services, and Verizon says it had terminated its location services agreement with Zumigo well before the story was published.
• Google, which runs Google Fi MVNO on infrastructure from T-Mobile and Sprint, says, "We have never sold Fi subscribers' location information. Google Fi is an MVNO and not a carrier, but as soon as we heard about this practice, we required our network partners to shut it down as soon as possible." The search giant however did not say when this clause was put into effect.
3. Amazon-owned smart security camera subsidiary Ring gave its teams in the U.S. and Ukraine unfettered access to people's home security camera videos and feeds, reports The Intercept.
• The report also adds that research teams in Ukraine were allowed unlimited access to every Ring camera worldwide beginning in 2016 via a folder on Amazon's S3 cloud storage service so as to improve its computer vision/facial recognition software.
• Ring responds to the concern, stating the "videos are sourced exclusively from publicly shared Ring videos from the Neighbors app (in accordance with our terms of service), and from a small fraction of Ring users who have provided their explicit written consent to allow us to access and utilize their videos for such purposes."
4. Security researchers find over dozens of iOS games to be communicating with known malware domain Golduck, sending IP address data — and, in some cases, location data to the server.
• The games include: Commando Metal: Classic Contra, Super Pentron Adventure: Super Hard, Classic Tank vs Super Bomber, Super Adventure of Maritron, Roy Adventure Troll Game, Trap Dungeons: Super Adventure, Bounce Classic Legend, Block Game, Classic Bomber: Super Legend, Brain It On: Stickman Physics, Bomber Game: Classic Bomberman, Classic Brick – Retro Block, The Climber Brick, and Chicken Shoot Galaxy Invaders.
5. Cambridge Analytica's parent company, SCL Elections, is fined £15,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for failing to respond to a U.S. citizen's request for copies of information it holds about him, after the man in question, a David Carroll, files a civil case against the company.
• SCL had earlier responded to his request by stating that as a non-U.K. citizen Carroll had no more right to submit a subject access request "than a member of the Taliban sitting in a cave in Afghanistan."
6. Google's parent company, Alphabet, gets sued by a shareholder over allegations it covered up claims of sexual harassment by top executives, including approving a US$ 90 million payout to one of them on his departure.
• A New York Times report late last year on Google's handling of sexual misconduct by top executives prompted a global walkout by employees in November.
7. A new study published in Science Advances finds that sharing of "fake news" was a relatively rare activity during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
• It also found that "Conservatives were more likely to share articles from fake news domains than liberals or moderates," and that "on average, users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as the youngest age group."
8. French privacy watchdog CNIL's view that Google's "Right to be Forgotten" in search results should be applied regardless of the geographical origin of the person finds little backing in European Court of Justice.
• The top court has taken Google's side with regards to limiting the "right to be forgotten" to internet searches made in the European Union.
9. Amazon's emergence as a mighty competitor to the manufacturers it hosts in its online marketplace has put antitrust regulators on alert, reports Axios.
• The retail giant currently has 135 private-label brands, and it has deals to sell another 332 brands exclusively around the world, according to a database maintained by TJI Research.
• Indian government recently announced new e-commerce rules (effective February 1) that forbid online marketplaces from entering into exclusivity agreements with sellers to sell their products, or sell products from companies it has a stake in.
10. Amazon says 100 million Alexa-enabled devices have been sold as "platform war" with Google Home (which has a billion devices with Google Assistant support) heightens at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (Jan 8-Jan 11); Apple subtly pokes fun at rivals and "champions" the cause of privacy with a giant billboard that goes: "What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone."
• Let's not forget that Apple - and later, Google - are both complicit in conceiving a freemium-based business model of selling apps via App Store that incentivised third-party app developers to make money by selling personal data and location history to advertisers. While the decisions taken by Apple and Google a decade ago have come back to haunt us in the most unexpected manner, the iPhone maker taking a sanctimonious moral high ground is blatant hypocrisy at best.
• Also, the clever spin on Vegas doesn't hold water. "What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone," only if users turn off iCloud sync and all sorts of analytics. What's more phones leak user location to telephone carriers constantly via GPS, Wi-Fi and cell tower tower triangulation, inherently making them tracking devices. And as we have recently learned (via Motherboard), telecom providers are more than happy to sell off location data to third-parties.
11. Qualcomm's ongoing patent feud with Apple leads to iPhone 7 and 8 sales ban in Germany; comes weeks after the country's court decided in favour of the chipmaker after finding Apple of infringing upon a patent to mitigate power consumption which enables the device to use power more efficiently and extend battery life in smartphones.
• It is to be noted that Apple is locked in a separate patent battle with Qualcomm in China for violating software patents relating to resizing photographs and app management on a touchscreen device, that the company worked around by issuing a software update to make infringing iPhone models compliant.
12. Apps from Chinese developers have come to dominate Indian app ecosytem, accounting for 44 of the top 100 apps, according to a new report by Factor Daily.
• Popular apps include TikTok, Like, Helo, SHAREit, LiveMe, UCBrowser, BeautyPlus, and more.
13. Google Duo video call app begins testing group calling feature (like Group FaceTime) and low-light mode that automatically adjusts video in dark environments for better visibility; updates Android Messages for Android to detect and block spam that works by cross-referencing inbound phone numbers against its servers. 
14. Google tests an iOS-like horizontally scrollable share menu; reportedly prepares for system-wide dark mode in Android Q and adds Android Auto support for its new Podcasts app.
15. Hotel chain Marriott International revises the number of affected customers in a massive data breach announced late last November; says only 383 million customer records were impacted (down from the initial 500 million) and says that 25.5 million passport numbers (5.25 million of which were stored in plain text) and approximately 8.6 million encrypted payment cards were also compromised in the breach.
16. Google quietly acquires Superpod for US$ 60 million, a startup founded by ex-Googlers William Li and Sophia Yang in 2016 that focused on providing its users with a platform to obtain answers from experts to questions from a wide variety of fields.
17. The city of Los Angeles sues The Weather Channel for its alleged inappropriate use of location data following an expose by The New York Times that found apps like WeatherBug and Weather Channel were sending precise user location to third-parties (a fact that it reveals to E.U. users explicitly after GDPR went into effect).
• The lawsuit claims that the Weather Channel "takes advantage of its app's widespread popularity by using it as an intrusive tool to mine users' private geolocation data, which [the Weather Channel] then sends to IBM affiliates and other third parties for advertising and other commercial purposes entirely unrelated to either weather or the Weather Channel App's services."
• This is not the first time apps have been shown to ask for smartphone permissions that they don't need and shouldn't have in the first place. AccuWeather was accused of similar behaviour in August 2017 by sending location information to a third-party called RevealMobile for targeted advertising purposes.
18. Apple relaxes its grip on the ecosystem by bringing iTunes Movies and TV Shows app to Samsung smart TVs (so far they were accessible only on Windows PCs via the iTunes app outside of its walled garden), allowing users to buy and rent content from iTunes directly from the TV, in what appears to be the company's continuing push towards becoming a Services oriented business and look beyond hardware; also brings AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support to TVs from Sony (which runs Android TV), Vizio and LG. 
19. Samsung forecasts declining declining profits due to weaker-than-expected demand for memory chips as well growing competition in the smartphone segment.
• If there is anything to be learnt, it's that both Apple and Samsung (and others) need to chill with the yearly upgrade cycle. The smartphone market has matured, hardware/software updates have gone on to become increasingly incremental, thereby obviating the need for updating to a new iPhone (or a Galaxy for that matter) every year. What's more, computing today is not just mobile, it has also taken the shape of A.I., voice, wearables, in-car infotainment systems and smart home gizmos, drastically changing the way users communicate with technology.
• In other news, Samsung has set a February 20 Unpacked event to unveil Galaxy S10 smartphone.
20. Google to bring some of its apps like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and Google Play to Samsung's Bixby voice assistant; Samsung returns the favour by offering Google Assistant compatibility to its smart TVs, giving users the ability to adjust volume, change channels and switch image input.
• This requires that users already own a piece of Google Assistant hardware - like a Home, Home Hub or third-party smart display or speaker.
21. Apple CEO Tim Cook says it plans to unveil new services this year, indicating that the company's plans for an on-demand video streaming service may finally be falling into place.
• But it's not just that. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is reportedly planning to unveil three iPhones for 2019, one with new triple camera system, despite less than expected sales of iPhone XR/XS/XS Max models. (As for the iPhone XR, it's cheaper, and  yet it didn't sell well. Because it's cheap. That's why: "Apple's best customers, not just those who buy an iPhone every year, but also those whose only two alternatives are 'my current once-flagship iPhone' or 'the new flagship iPhone' are motivated first-and-foremost by having the best; price is a secondary concern," via Stratechery's Ben Thompson.)
• The development comes after a belated admission about a shortfall in global iPhone revenue, triggering a massive slide in Apple's shares. The company chalked up the weak sales outlook to challenges in China (a massive market for iPhones, no less), and the fact that "iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be," citing Apple's improved battery replacement practices and the decline of smartphone subsidies by wireless carriers as reasons, indirectly hinting that iPhone's spectacular success depended partly on slick pricing schemes (Apple's response to falling iPhone sales has been to increase prices, and the cost of a new iPhone has increased 15% in two years) and planned obsolescence, something the company has been accused of in the past.
22. Google begins to send emails to users affected by the Google+ data API bug that inadvertently exposed private information (including fields that were not set to public) to third-party app developers.
23. Microsoft-owned software versioning platform GitHub allows users on "Free" plan to create unlimited number of private repositories as long as the number of collaborators are limited to three.
24. Google announces a slew of updates to Google Assistant; integrates the artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant into Google Maps to allow users add new stops en route to destination, play music, share ETAs and read/reply to messages, and adds new features like flight check-ins (U.S. only), hotel booking (U.S. only), language interpreter mode (using Assistant as an interpreter when talking in two different languages), and Android lockscreen support, in addition to announcing Connect, a new platform for device manufacturers to bring Assistant to their products.
25. Popular video game Fortnite rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars through sales of virtual items, sales of virtual money, and seasonal Battle Pass; estimated to have grossed over US$ 455 million in iOS revenue in 2018, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.
26. Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony's video game subsidiary, acquires Audiokinetic, maker of game development tools like Wwise.
27. On demand video streaming service Netflix begins testing new 'Show Me That Scene Again' pop-up that lets users to rewatch a scene again instead of having to manually rewind it.
28. Samsung smartphone users express frustration over concerns that Facebook app comes pre-installed with no option to remove it. (Has the wake-up call come a little too late?)
29. Facebook begins widely rolling out redesign for Messenger app it announced last May at its developers conference.
30. Amazon said to be developing a cloud gaming service which could launch as soon as 2020, according to multiple reports from The Information and The Verge, as it prepares to take on rivals Microsoft (which unveiled xCloud at E3 last June) and Google (it's currently testing Project Stream that allows users to run high-end games straight from Chrome web browser).
31. Google discontinues Chromecast Audio, a variation of Chromecast that allowed users to stream audio from their devices to speakers via Wi-Fi, as Google Home smart speakers (which effectively bundle the two separate things into one) take off.