The Federal Communications Commission commissioner asks Google and Apple to ban TikTok, Tesla has started another round of layoffs, and California’s Department of Justice suffers a data breach that exposed personal information.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday, June 30, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
The FCC commissioner has asked Google and Apple to ban the video app TikTok. Brendan Carr tweeted, along with a copy of the letter he sent Apple and Google, asking the companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. The agency’s senior Republican commissioner referenced a BuzzFeed News article that showed leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings. The leaked audio revealed that China-based employees of TikTok parent company ByteDance, had repeatedly accessed private information on U.S. users. In his letter to the big tech companies, Carr listed other reports showing “concerning evidence,” regarding TikTok’s data practices. Evidence included instances where researchers discovered that the app can circumvent Android and iOS safeguards to access sensitive data.
Source: Engadget
Tesla is doing another round of layoffs, targeting employees in its Autopilot division, according to Bloomberg. The electric car company laid off an estimated 200 workers and closed an entire office in San Mateo, California. Some of the workers in the office were relocated. This news follows chief executive officer Elon Musk’s statement saying he wanted to cut jobs due to a “super bad feeling” about the economy. Last week, two former Tesla workers in Nevada filed a lawsuit that said the company broke the law by letting go of people without giving notice required by the WARN Act. The act requires large companies, in certain circumstances, to give people 60 days notice about a big layoff event.
Source: Business Insider
Personal info of all concealed carry gun permit holders in California was leaked after the state’s Department of Justice suffered a data breach. NBC News says the County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday learned of the breach from the California State Sherriff’s Association. The breach occurred as a part of California’s DOJ’s launch of its “2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal,” the sheriff’s office said in the statement. The state took down the dashboard site along with any related links after learning of the breach. The personal information included full names, age, address, Criminal Identification Index number and license type.
Source: NBC News
People are using deep fakes to pose as someone else in interviews for remote jobs. In a public announcement, the FBI said it has received an uptick in complaints about people superimposing videos, images, and audio recordings of another person onto themselves during job interviews. The complaints were tied to remote tech roles that would have granted successful candidates access to sensitive data. The FBI revealed the data could have included Personally Identifiable Information, financial data, and corporate IT databases. Deepfake technology has often been used for entertainment purposes, but the tech also enables new kinds of threats. The harm that someone could face from being impersonated is concerning, the FBI noted. According to Business Insider, the agency said that anyone who has identified deep fake attempts should report the cases to its complaint website.
Source: Business Insider
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.