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Flickr postpones photo deletions for free users to March 12th
Don't panic if you missed the February 5th deadline before the new owners at SmugMug (previously Engadget's parent Verizon) started deleting Flickr photos beyond the 1,000-image limit for free accounts. SmugMug has postponed the deletion period to March 12th in the wake of feedback and "complications" with photo downloads. While it wasn't specific about what those issues were, USA Today reported "unresponsive" downloads and sluggish deletions, with requests for archives going unanswered days later.
Judge rejects Yahoo's proposed settlement over data breaches
Yahoo's proposed settlement over massive data breaches hasn't passed muster in the courtroom. Judge Lucy Koh has rejected the settlement from the company (now owned by Engadget parent Verizon) for not specifying how much victims could expect to recover. While the proposal included $50 million in damages and would pay $25 for every hour spent dealing with the breaches, Koh was concerned that it didn't reveal the scope of the settlement fund or the costs of the two years of promised credit monitoring. The judge was also worried the proposed class for the settlement was too large, as it didn't reflect the considerably smaller number of active users during the affected period.
Tumblr for iOS disappears from the App Store
You won't want to rush to get Tumblr's iOS app at the moment... because you can't. Users have noticed that the social network (part of Engadget's parent company Verizon) has been unavailable on the App Store. It's not certain what prompted the disappearance or who was responsible, but the outfit has talked about addressing an "issue" with the iOS release since November 16th. We've asked the company for comment.
Flickr limits free plan to 1,000 photos or videos
Flickr is killing its 1TB of free storage in favor of a no-cost plan where you're limited to 1,000 photos or videos, no matter the file size. The move comes amid a raft of changes at the photo hosting service, which SmugMug bought from Yahoo earlier this year.
Yahoo agrees to pay $50 million to data breach victims
Yahoo will have to cough up $50 million in damages as part of a settlement following massive data breaches that took place in 2013 and 2014. The first breach affected three billion accounts, while the second affected 500 million accounts -- neither were disclosed until 2016. Hacked information included passwords that were encrypted but could be cracked.
Bing and Yahoo were suggesting offensive search terms
Tech companies continue to have problems with clearly offensive search terms, and Microsoft is no exception to the rule. How-To Geek discovered that Bing (and by extension, our sibling brand Yahoo) was suggesting offensive searches even if you had SafeSearch turned on. If you searched for "Jews" or "black people are," for example, you'd see racist auto-complete recommendations. Even an innocuous video search for "Michelle Obama" would turn up bigoted suggestions, while image searches offered queries for underage girls and similarly disgusting (not to mention illegal) results.
Yahoo Together group chat app organizes conversations by topic
You have loads of group chat apps to choose from if you want to keep in touch with friends and family, but Yahoo's new entry promises a more organized experience than most. The company has launched a new app for Android and iOS called Yahoo Together, which can split up conversations into topics. In a room with a dozen people or so, things can quickly get lost. Together allows you to group conversations and slap an appropriate titled on each one, so you can follow them more closely than the general chat without having to create a separate room. And in case you only care about specific topics, you can also mute the rest.
Yahoo Japan is shutting down the last remnants of GeoCities
Yahoo Japan, the last enclave of GeoCities, is scrapping the beloved website-hosting service. In March 2019 -- 22 years after its original launch -- GeoCities will be extinct, according to Quartz. Yahoo, which bought the platform in 1999 for $3.57 billion in stock, announced the closure on its Japanese website, citing profitability and technological issues. As a result, Yahoo "regrets" that all the GeoCities content -- compartmentalized into "neighborhoods", as is the norm -- will be wiped from the web along with it.
With new updates, Yahoo bets big on Mail’s mobile future
Few things are a uniquely annoying as having to use your email service's mobile interfaces — they're basic, they're kind of ugly, and they rarely provide the niceties you'd normally be used to. Yahoo wants to change that. The brand (which, like Engadget, is own by Verizon's Oath) today announced a new mobile web interface that looks and feels more like Yahoo's full-blown Mail app.
UK privacy watchdog slaps Yahoo with another fine over 2014 hack
Yahoo still isn't done facing the consequences for its handling of a massive 2014 data breach. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office has slapped Yahoo UK Services Ltd with a £250,000 (about $334,300) fine under the country's Data Protection Act. The ICO determined that Yahoo didn't take "appropriate" steps to protect the data of 515,121 UK users against hacks, including meeting protection standards and monitoring the credentials of staff with access to the information.
Yahoo Messenger will shut down on July 17th
Today, Yahoo announced that its Messenger service will be discontinued after July 17th, 2018. If you're looking for a Messenger replacement, Yahoo recommends the product Squirrel, which is currently in beta and invite only. You can request an invitation here.
Attacker involved in 2014 Yahoo hack gets five years in prison
The hacker-for-hire involved in the 2014 Yahoo security breach that affected 500 million users has been sentenced to five years in prison. Karim Baratov aka Karim Taloverov aka Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov said he didn't know he was working for Russian spies, since he didn't research his customers. His name first came up when two Russian nationals were charged with orchestrating the Yahoo breach -- according to the DOJ, those nationals were the ones who gave him data from the breach, which he then used to hack into the email accounts of American and Russian journalists, government officials and employees of financial services and private businesses, as well as other persons of interest.
Four men linked to Mugshots.com have been charged with extortion
Four men allegedly behind the website Mugshots.com have been arrested and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced charges of extortion, money laundering and identity theft. The website mines information from police department websites, pulling names, mugshots and charges of those who have been arrested, and then publishes them online. To get the content taken down, individuals have to pay a "de-publishing" fee -- a practice that has been illegal in California since 2015. Becerra's office says that over the course of three years, the site collected more than $64,000 from California residents and over $2.4 million nationwide.
How Engadget's parent company is making sites like ours easier to use
Today, May 17th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, but in fact, this entire month has been an eventful one for people with disabilities. Two weeks ago, Google and Microsoft pledged to commit $20 and $25 million to the cause, respectively, to accessibility tech. Today, Microsoft revealed the Xbox Adaptive Controller while Apple unveiled a coding curriculum that can also be used by students who are deaf and/or blind. Meanwhile, Oath, Engadget's parent company, which also owns Yahoo, rang in the day by holding an open house at its accessibility lab, where, among other things, it works to make sites like ours easier for everyone to use. And that includes sites and services outside Oath too: The accessibility-tech community is a small one, with researchers at Oath, Apple, Microsoft, Google and other tech companies regularly collaborating with one another. (Microsoft Chief Accessibility Officer Jennie-Lay Flurrie made the same point in an interview with Engadget two weeks ago.) What Oath is working on might show up in another company's products, and vice versa.
What’s left of Yahoo slapped with $35 million fine over 2014 data breach
In 2014, Yahoo suffered a breach that exposed personal data for 500 million users -- but they refused to tell anyone and the news didn't break until late 2016. For failing to disclose the incident and inform anyone affected, the company formerly known as Yahoo! (now Altaba, consisting of the parts that didn't merge with Verizon to become Oath) has agreed to pay the SEC a $35 million fine.
Pro photo storage site SmugMug buys Flickr
Long before Minecraft exploded from a development tool to a game purchased by Microsoft for billions of dollars, there was Flickr. The photo-sharing started in 2004 based on tools built for a never-released MMO before being purchased by Yahoo (now a part of Oath, the parent company of Engadget) in 2005 for more than $20 million. Now the service and its 75 million~ accounts have been purchased by SmugMug, a smaller competitor focused on professionals. SmugMug is a similar site that started in 2002, but from the beginning it has focused on serving people willing to pay for its privacy and storage, as opposed to Flickr, where most people are using free accounts. Over the years competition from social networks and newer photo apps like Instagram chewed away at Flickr's active users, and its influence has stagnated. SmugMug claims that together, the two services represent "the world's most influential photographer-centric community" where "perspective is shared, not forced."
FDA wants Facebook and Twitter to crack down on opioid sales
In a speech given yesterday at the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that the agency would be inviting a number of internet company CEOs to a summit that will host discussions on potential solutions to the tech industry's role in the US opioid crisis. Gottlieb says that the FDA has found offers to purchase opioids and other drugs on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Google, Yahoo and Bing. He added that in a report from the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, investigators found that "'it was easy to find fentanyl advertised online,' pay for it using cryptocurrency or credit cards and have it shipped to anywhere in the United States through international mail."
US sanctions Russians for cyberattacks and election meddling
The US Department of the Treasury has instituted sanctions against five Russian entities and 19 individuals for their involvement in a number of cyberattacks and online efforts to interfere with the US presidential election. The sanctions prohibit US companies and individuals from conducting business with those named by the Treasury Department. "The Administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in US elections, destructive cyberattacks and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure," Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement. "These targeted sanctions are a part of a broader effort to address the ongoing nefarious attacks emanating from Russia. Treasury intends to impose additional CAATSA sanctions, informed by our intelligence community, to hold Russian government officials and oligarchs accountable for their destabilizing activities by severing their access to the US financial system."
Yahoo loses its bid to reject data breach lawsuit
Yahoo (and by extension, its parent/Engadget owner Verizon) now has no choice but to face the majority of claims in a US lawsuit over the internet giant's multiple data breaches. California Judge Lucy Koh (of Apple-versus-Samsung fame) has denied Verizon's bid to dismiss numerous claims in the suit, including breach of contract and negligence. The plaintiffs' claims demonstrated that they would have "behaved differently" if they'd known about Yahoo's email security woes, Judge Koh said, and that Yahoo's attempts to limit liability were "unconscionable" given how much it knew about its security problems and how little it did.
DNC hires former Yahoo security chief in wake of 2016 hacks
The Democratic National Committee's (DNC) new chief security officer position has been filled, Wired reports. Bob Lord, who was previously Yahoo's chief information security officer prior to its acquisition by Verizon, will take over the position and will be working with both the national offices as well as smaller state offices. "I'll be working to protect my new colleagues at the DNC from the attackers who would prefer to keep us distracted from our mission of getting Democrats across the nation elected," Lord said in a statement. "And my job doesn't stop at the front door of the building -- my team and I will work with state parties to update their information security strategies and deployments to change the economics for the attackers."
