Several Reddit communities dedicated to sharing news and media from conflicts around the world now require users in the UK to submit a photo ID or selfie in order to prove they are old enough to view “mature” content. The new age verification system is a result of the recently enacted Online Safety Act in…
Tea, the viral women’s dating safety app, has turned off direct messages after 404 Media revealed that a vulnerability allowed unauthorized parties to gain access to users’ direct messages, including many in which women discussed their abortions, cheating partners, and phone numbers they sent to one another. Kasra Rahjerdi, the independent security researcher who first…
This article was produced with support from WIRED. Meta told employees that it is going to allow some coding job candidates to use an AI assistant during the interview process, according to internal Meta communications seen by 404 Media. The company has also asked existing employees to volunteer for a “mock AI-enabled interview,” the messages say. It’s…
A second, major security issue with women’s dating safety app Tea has exposed much more user data than the first breach we first reported last week, with an independent security researcher now finding it was possible for hackers to access messages between users discussing abortions, cheating partners, and phone numbers they sent to one another….
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. A former content moderator for Chaturbate is suing the live-streaming porn platform for psychological trauma he claims he suffered after being exposed to “extreme, violent, graphic, and sexually explicit content” every day without industry-standard safeguards, according…
A company called Germ is aiming to bring end-to-end encrypted messages to Bluesky’s AT Protocol, a feature that the social network doesn’t currently have. The tool’s security is yet to be independently audited, but the company says it plans to seek that out soon. Mark Xue, a former privacy engineer at Apple and CTO of…
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the climate warnings, cosmic apocalypses, and wolf tales that made an impression on me this week. First, a dispatch from the northernmost settlement on Earth, where climate warming is completely reshaping the landscape. Then: a case of star-crossed companions, encounters with globular clusters, and some trophic cascades as…
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 creeper glasses, Amazon comms, and a DIY 404 party. SAM: Earlier this week, Chris Samra released this teaser video for Waves, smart glasses in the vein of…
Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples’ personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and…
Payment processors are rapidly changing what types of content can and can’t be easily accessed online. Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, and other major players that process most of the money people earn on the internet have always had this power, and have long discriminated against sexual content and sex work, but they have been forcing…