An industry of tech companies is now selling AI-powered chatbot services to Airbnb hosts which reply to guests on their behalf. 404 Media started looking into the companies after one Airbnb host used AI to communicate with their guests, and when the guests seemingly realized, they tricked the chatbot into instead providing a fairly detailed…
An independent privacy audit of Microsoft, Meta, and Google web traffic in California found that the companies may be violating state regulations and racking up billions in fines. According to the audit from privacy search engine webXray, 55 percent of the sites it checked set ad cookies in a user’s browser even if they opted…
A hacker has compromised a backend system for Doublespeed, an a16z-funded startup that uses a phone farm to flood social media with AI-generated TikTok accounts, and attempted to have those accounts post memes calling a16z the “antichrist,” according to screenshots seen by 404 Media. The hack is at least the second time Doublespeed has been…
Why does the internet feel like it’s getting worse every single day, and why does it feel like the political landscape is getting worse in response? The answer might seem obvious, especially if you read 404 Media on a regular basis, where we’ve been documenting this decline, but it’s important to occasionally zoom out and…
WebinarTV, a site that scrapes Zoom webinars without permission, has downloaded and posted Zoom Webinars for anonymous addiction recovery meetings, support groups for caregivers and people who suffer from chronic illness, and a meeting of nudists. WebinarTV’s Michael Robertson told me that the company asks every single person for permission to “promote” their webinars, but…
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that were ritually sacrificed, kicked out of the galaxy, taxonomically revised, and wore many hats. First, scientists shed light on human sacrifice and cousin sex using ancient DNA from the bones of people who lived in fifth-century Korea. Then: the yeeting of a star,…
Categories: Threat Research Tags: advisory, vulnerability, Adobe Reader
We can’t control the pace of AI-driven vulnerability discovery, but we can control how fast we respond. Categories: Sophos Insights Tags: LLM, AI, Exploit, vulnerability, Active Adversary, Pacific Rim
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss gun violence and chatbots and acceptance of depravity. EMANUEL: It takes a lot for a post to shock me these days, especially if it’s from a known…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have observed an extremely rare chimpanzee “civil war,” a conflict that has killed at least seven adults and 17 infants, and which sheds new light on the nature of warfare…
