Tech Roundup: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Event, Xiaomi Security Scare & More

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

1. Brazil's Ministry of Justice fines Facebook 6.6 million reais (US$ 1.6 million) for improperly sharing user data of 443,000 Facebook users with developers of "thisisyourdigitallife" app (culminating in the infamous Cambridge Analytica data scandal back in 2018), adding the social network failed to provide users with adequate information regarding default privacy settings, particularly related to data of "friends" and "friends of friends."
2. ProtonMail launches end-to-end encrypted calendar app ProtonCalendar in public beta, tied to users' paid ProtonMail accounts, encrypting event information and participant details.
3. Snapchat unveils plans to woo Indian users with vernacular language support months after opening its first office in the country back in August.
4. Microsoft takes control of 50 websites that were used by a North Korea-linked hacking group dubbed Thallium to carry out spear phishing attacks to trick its victims in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.
5. The Chinese government begins allowing test drives of self-driving cars with passengers in designated areas, with tech giant Baidu trialing out its robotaxi services with professional test crews.
6. Russia's Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) opens investigation into hotel reservation website Booking.com over allegations that the company had asked hotels and hostels to offer the same prices on rival reservation websites as on Booking.com.
7. Facebook-owned WhatsApp drops support for Windows Phone; only supports devices running Android 4.0.3+, iOS 9+ and KaiOS 2.5.1+, including JioPhone and JioPhone 2.
8. The South Korean government prepares to install over 3,000 AI-equipped security cameras in the Seocho District of Seoul that can measure the likelihood of crime by processing the location, time, and behaviour patterns of passersby.
9. More than 100,000 leaked Cambridge Analytica documents reveal that the Facebook data scandal was part of a broad operation in 68 countries involving governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns as part of an operation used to manipulate voters on "an industrial scale."
10. Samsung announces its next Galaxy Unpacked event on February 11 in San Francisco to unveil next generation Galaxy S10 and Fold phones.
11. Snap acquires Ukraine-based computer vision startup AI Factory, which helped create the "Cameos" feature Snapchat is now testing, reportedly for US$166 million.
12. Google says its AI model found breast cancer in screening mammograms with fewer false positives and fewer false negatives than human experts found, indicating that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve the accuracy of screening for breast cancer.
13. Mozilla to allow all users to request the deletion of Firefox telemetry data stored on its servers in accordance with California's privacy regulations (aka CCPA) effective January 7.
14. Google disables Xiaomi integrations on its smart home devices after a bug allowed Xiaomi security camera users to view video feeds from random homes; Xiaomi says it's fixed the problem, and that the issue was caused by a cache update on December 26, 2019, which was designed to improve camera streaming quality.
15. Apple expands its lawsuit with mobile device virtualisation company Corellium, claiming the latter facilitates jailbreaking through its software that makes it possible for security researchers to access virtual machines that run copies of the operating system used in iPhones and iPads; says Corellium sells "perfect replicas" of iOS without a license from Apple and markets its software as "a research tool for those trying to discover security vulnerabilities and other flaws in Apple's software."