Techmeme
August 7, 2020, 8:45 PM

Top News

Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal:
US government contractor Anomaly Six collects and sells location data from hundreds of millions of phones globally via an SDK that is embedded in 500+ apps  —  Anomaly Six has ties to military, intelligence agencies and draws location data from more than 500 apps with hundreds of millions of users
Olivia Solon / NBC News:
Internal docs: Facebook removed “strikes” so that at least 2 conservative pages, from PragerU and Diamond & Silk, dodged penalties under misinformation policies  —  Facebook has allowed conservative news outlets and personalities to repeatedly spread false information without facing …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Trump signs an executive order to block all transactions with ByteDance and WeChat starting Sept. 20, just 5 days after Microsoft's deadline to acquire TikTok  —  Microsoft is currently in talks to acquire the company  —  President Trump has signed a new executive order …
Financial Times:
As it pursues TikTok, a look at how Microsoft laid roots in China in the 1990s and nurtured China's future tech leaders, including ByteDance's Zhang Yiming  —  The US tech company hopes its connections will help it navigate storm safely  —  More than two decades of efforts by Microsoft …
James Vincent / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Isobel Asher Hamilton / Business Insider:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Facebook slams Apple's App Store policies, launches Facebook Gaming on iOS without the app's mini games feature to pass the App Store's strict approval policies  —  Facebook is not happy with the months of rejections it has faced  —  Facebook is joining Microsoft in condemning Apple's App Store policies today.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
New York Times:
Former staff at therapy-by-text app Talkspace say the company provided burner phones to write fake app reviews and doesn't adequately respect client privacy  —  The therapy-by-text company made burner phones available for fake reviews and doesn't adequately respect client privacy, former employees say.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Qualcomm patches 6 security flaws in a Snapdragon DSP used in most Android phones, which allowed attackers to take over a phone without needing user interaction  —  Several security vulnerabilities found in Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip Digital Signal Processor (DSP) chip could allow attackers …
Adrianne Jeffries / The Markup:
Leaked docs: Alphabet trains staff not to use certain terms in writing like “market”, “barriers to entry”, and “network effects”, to avoid antitrust issues  —  The Markup obtained internal documents that coach new employees to avoid creating “very real legal risks” …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Researchers: China's state-sponsored hackers stole source code, SDKs, and chip designs from at least seven Taiwanese chip companies over the past two years  —  A campaign called Operation Skeleton Key has stolen source code, software development kits, chip designs, and more.

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Earlier Picks

James Vincent / The Verge:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: