Uber apparently squandered an estimated $100 million on third-party digital advertising campaigns. Input Mag reports: Former Sleeping Giants alum and co-founder of Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi, caught most of us up on the whole situation yesterday in a lengthy Twitter thread detailing just how Uber, the poster child of startup capitalism’s unethical robber baron mentality, managed to recently waste a…
Tag: google play
Study Finds More Than $100 Billion Spent on App Stores in 2020
A new report by Sensor Tower reveals that 2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which collectively passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November. From a report: The trend of increased spending continued over Christmas, when consumers around the world spent an estimated…
Baidu’s Android Apps Caught Collecting Sensitive User Details
Two Android applications belonging to Chinese tech giant Baidu were removed from the official Google Play Store at the end of October after they were caught collecting sensitive user details. From a report: The two apps — Baidu Maps and Baidu Search Box — were removed after Google received a report from US cyber-security firm Palo Alto Networks. Both apps had…
Messaging App Go SMS Pro Exposed Millions of Users’ Private Photos and Files
Go SMS Pro, one of the most popular messaging apps for Android, is exposing photos, videos and other files sent privately by its users. Worse, the app maker has done nothing to fix the bug. TechCrunch reports: Security researchers at Trustwave discovered the flaw in August and contacted the app maker with a 90-day deadline to fix the issue, as is…
How the US Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard at Vice: The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include…
Google Sued After Mobile Allowances Eaten Up By Hidden Data Transfers
Slashdot reader Iwastheone shared this report from the Register: Google on Thursday was sued for allegedly stealing Android users’ cellular data allowances though unapproved, undisclosed transmissions to the web giant’s servers… The complaint contends that Google is using Android users’ limited cellular data allowances without permission to transmit information about those individuals that’s unrelated to their use of Google services… What…
Google’s Play Store Identified as Main Distribution Vector For Most Android Malware
The official Google Play Store has been identified as the primary source of malware installs on Android devices in a recent academic study — considered the largest one of its kind carried out to date. From a report: Using telemetry data provided by NortonLifeLock (formerly Symantec), researchers analyzed the origin of app installations on more than 12 million Android devices for…
India Opens Antitrust Case Against Google Over Its Payments App
India’s antitrust watchdog has opened an investigation into Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its app store to promote its payments service in the world’s second largest internet market. From a report: In its Monday announcement about opening an antitrust case against Google, Indian watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) said it would review claims of whether the Android…
UK Ad Authority Bans Misleading Homescapes and Gardenscapes Ads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Two misleading ads for mobile games that bear little relation to the actual product have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ads, for the Homescapes and Gardenscapes games, both come from developer Playrix. They showed a game where users pull pins in a specific order to solve a puzzle…
Waymo Starts To Open Driverless Ride-Hailing Service To the Public
Waymo, the Google self-driving-project-turned-Alphabet unit, is beginning to open up its driverless ride-hailing service to the public. From a report: The company said that starting today members of its Waymo One service will be able to take family and friends along on their fully driverless rides in the Phoenix area. Existing Waymo One members will have the first access to the…