It was teased last month, and now it’s official: PayPal is bringing its newly-announced support for cryptocurrency to all US accounts. Engadget reports: PayPal says all eligible users can start buying, selling and holding bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum and bitcoin cash. Beginning next year, PayPal also plans to bring cryptocurrency into Venmo and will allow users to pay merchants with their cryptocurrency…
Tag: Venmo
Cringely Predicts the U.S. Can’t Stop WeChat
An anonymous reader quotes long-time technology pundit Robert Cringely:
Forty-five days from now, we’re told, President Trump will shut down TikTok and WeChat. TikTok, maybe, but WeChat? Impossible… Trump has a chance of taking down TikTok, the short form video sharing site, because that service is dependent on advertising. He can force the app out of U.S. app stores (though not out…
PayPal, Venmo To Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling, Says Report
Fintech giant PayPal plans to roll out direct sales of cryptocurrency to its 325 million users, reports CoinDesk, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Currently, PayPal can be used as an alternative means for withdrawing funds from exchanges such as Coinbase, but this would be a first in terms of offering direct sales of crypto. “My understanding is…
ACLU Accuses Clearview AI of Privacy ‘Nightmare Scenario’
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued the facial recognition start-up Clearview AI (alternative source), which claims to have helped hundreds of law enforcement agencies use online photos to solve crimes, accusing the company of “unlawful, privacy-destroying surveillance activities.” The New York Times reports: In a suit filed in Illinois, the A.C.L.U. said that Clearview violated a state law that…
How a Facebook Bug Took Down Your Favorite iOS Apps
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A little after 6 pm ET on Wednesday, the system started blinking red for iOS developer Clay Jones. Like many devs, Jones uses a Google product called Crashlytics to keep tabs on when his app stops working. Out of nowhere, it registered tens of thousands of crashes. It also pointed to the cause:…
Cash App Scammers Are Using Coronavirus To Exploit People
An anonymous reader shares a report: Reyna is a teenager in Florida whose family is strapped for cash amid the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus. When the uber-popular beauty influencer Jeffree Star tweeted that he’d be giving out $30,000 via payment service Cash App to a random person who retweeted him, she did just that. Star’s offer seems to have…
Twitter Tells Facial Recognition Trailblazer To Stop Using Site’s Photos
Kashmir Hill reporting for The New York Times: A mysterious company that has licensed its powerful facial recognition technology to hundreds of law enforcement agencies is facing attacks from Capitol Hill and from at least one Silicon Valley giant.
Twitter sent a letter this week to the small start-up company, Clearview AI, demanding that it stop taking photos and any other data…
Facial Recognition Database With 3 Billion Scraped Images ‘Might End Privacy as We Know It’
One police detective bragged that photos “could be covertly taken with a telephoto lens” then input into Clearview AI’s database of more than three billion scraped images to immediately identify suspects. Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: For the past year, government transparency non-profits and Open the Government have been digging into how local police departments around the country use facial recognition….
New York Is Proposing the Creation of a ‘Public Venmo’
pnutjam writes: New York is proposing a statewide virtual currency aimed at helping unbanked citizens get access to day-to-day financial transactions without predatory fees. Since there are an estimated 14 million U.S. adults without bank accounts, lawmakers in New York are trying to fix this with a new bill that “would create a ‘public Venmo’ system designed to include more people…