Technology

New Delhi: Many materials published on Facebook and Google resources can be considered interference in Russia's internal affairs, said an official of the Russian Central Election Commission. On Sunday, municipal and regional elections were held across Russia, with a total of 22 administrative centres electing city parliaments, and three regional capitals electing heads of municipalities, Sputnik news agency reported. "Much of what is published there can be attributed to those materials that directly affect a person who is making a choice," said Nikolai Bulayev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Central Election Commission.

New Delhi: Hackers on Saturday broke into Twitter Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Dorsey's account and posted a flurry of rogue tweets, including racial slurs, said an IANS report. The micro-blogging platform later said that it secured Dorsey's account which became victim of 'SIM swapping' or 'SIM jacking' where a mobile number is transferred to a new SIM card. By taking control of Dorsey's number, hackers posted tweets via text messages on his Twitter account.

A hacker group called 'Chuckling Squad' claimed that it was behind the cyber attack on Dorsey's Twitter account which has over 4 million followers. "The phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider," Twitter said in a statement. "This allowed an unauthorised person to compose and send tweets via text messages from the phone number," the company added. According to TechCrunch, one of the tweets posted a Twitter handle of someone who purported to take credit for the account takeover. That account was immediately suspended.

New Delhi: Google is rolling out new AI features to its Lens platform that would let users search their Google Photos library for text that appears within photos, said an IANS report. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) feature would start rolling out from this month itself, Google said in a tweet. With this, users would be able to copy text from the images and paste them in a word document or notes. This works on both the Android and iOS apps, as well as the web client, 9to5Google reported.

As per reports, the feature is currently available on some Android devices, although it does not appear to be active on iOS yet. "Starting this month, we are rolling out the ability to search your photos by the text in them. Once you find the photo you are looking for, click the Lens button to easily copy and paste text," Google wrote in response to venture capitalist Hunter Walk, who noticed earlier this week that the Lens feature had been turned on for his account. 

New Delhi: A US court has ruled that Facebook users from Illinois state can go ahead with a class action lawsuit against social media giant Facebook over alleged illegal collection of user data without their consent. US non-profit group, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), quoted a court document as saying that the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco gave a green light to the Illinois users to sue Facebook over privacy breach by using the technology of facial recognition, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.

Judge Sandra Ikuta said in the ruling that Illinois users can bring a class action lawsuit against Facebook, whose facial recognition software "invades an individual's private affairs and concrete interests". The Circuit Court rejected a Facebook appeal to block the class action lawsuit by the Facebook users who accused the US media company of storing biometric data for millions of users without their consent. "Facebook's facial recognition technology violated Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)," said the court document.

New Delhi: Facebook-owned WhatsApp is reportedly working on a desktop version of the app that would allow users to use the messaging app on a PC without having to connect their phone to the Internet. In 2015, WhatsApp released a web version that mirrored the conversation from the mobile app, but to use it, one needed to have their phone connected to the Internet.

Reliable WhatsApp leaker account WABetaInfo tweeted on Friday that the company might be developing a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app along with a new multi-platform system that would work even when your phone is off. In addition, WhatsApp is also reportedly working on a multi-platform system that would allow users to access their chats and profiles on more than one device with the same account.