U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday said they have charged eight individuals in a securities fraud scheme, alleging they reaped about $114 million from by using Twitter and Discord to manipulate stocks. Reuters reports: The eight men allegedly purported to be successful traders on the social media platforms and then engaged in a so-called "pump and dump" scheme by hyping particular stocks to their followers with the intent to dump them once prices had risen, according to prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it has filed related civil charges against the defendants in the scheme, claiming that seven of the defendants used Twitter and Discord to boost stocks. It said the eighth was charged with aiding and abetting the scheme with his podcast. The individuals charged were Texas residents Edward Constantinescu, Perry Matlock, John Rybarczyk and Dan Knight, along with California residents Gary Deel and Tom Cooperman, Stefan Hrvatin of Miami and Mitchell Hennessey of Hoboken, New Jersey.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In mid-2020, FTX's chief engineer made a secret change to the cryptocurrency exchange's software. He tweaked the code to exempt Alameda Research, a hedge fund owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, from a feature on the trading platform that would have automatically sold off Alameda's assets if it was losing too much borrowed money. In a note explaining the change, the engineer, Nishad Singh, emphasized that FTX should never sell Alameda's positions. "Be extra careful not to liquidate," Singh wrote in the comment in the platform's code, which it showed he helped author. Reuters reviewed the code base, which has not been previously reported.

The exemption allowed Alameda to keep borrowing funds from FTX irrespective of the value of the collateral securing those loans. That tweak in the code got the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged Bankman-Fried with fraud on Tuesday. The SEC said the tweak meant Alameda had a "virtually unlimited line of credit." Furthermore, the billions of dollars that FTX secretly lent to Alameda over the next two years didn't come from its own reserves, but rather were other FTX customers' deposits, the SEC said.

The auto-liquidation exemption written into FTX code allowed Alameda to continually increase its line of credit until it "grew to tens of billions of dollars and effectively became limitless," the SEC complaint said. It was one of two ways that Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds to Alameda. The other was a mechanism whereby FTX customers deposited over $8 billion in traditional currency into bank accounts secretly controlled by Alameda. These deposits were reflected in an internal account on FTX that was not tied to Alameda, which concealed its liability, the complaint said.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked the Biden administration to weigh in on song-lyric website Genius' attempt to revive a lawsuit over Google's alleged theft of its work. From a report: The justices are considering whether to hear ML Genius Holdings LLC's bid to overturn a U.S. appeals court's ruling that its case against Google LLC was preempted by federal copyright law. The Supreme Court often asks for the solicitor general's input on cases in which the U.S. government may have an interest.

Genius, formerly known as Rap Genius, keeps a database of song lyrics and annotations maintained by volunteers. It sued Google and its partner LyricFind in New York state court in 2019 for allegedly posting its lyric transcriptions at the top of Google search results without permission. Genius argued Google violated its terms of service by stealing its work and reposting it on Google webpages, decreasing traffic to Genius' site. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March affirmed a decision to dismiss the case, finding Genius' breach-of-contract claims were based on copyright concerns and should have been brought under copyright law.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: On Dec. 10, 2022, the relatively new cybercrime forum Breached featured a bombshell new sales thread: The user database for InfraGard, including names and contact information for tens of thousands of InfraGard members. The FBI's InfraGard program is supposed to be a vetted Who's Who of key people in private sector roles involving both cyber and physical security at companies that manage most of the nation's critical infrastructures -- including drinking water and power utilities, communications and financial services firms, transportation and manufacturing companies, healthcare providers, and nuclear energy firms. "InfraGard connects critical infrastructure owners, operators, and stakeholders with the FBI to provide education, networking, and information-sharing on security threats and risks," the FBI's InfraGard fact sheet reads.

KrebsOnSecurity contacted the seller of the InfraGard database, a Breached forum member who uses the handle "USDoD" and whose avatar is the seal of the U.S. Department of Defense. USDoD said they gained access to the FBI's InfraGard system by applying for a new account using the name, Social Security Number, date of birth and other personal details of a chief executive officer at a company that was highly likely to be granted InfraGard membership. The CEO in question -- currently the head of a major U.S. financial corporation that has a direct impact on the creditworthiness of most Americans -- did not respond to requests for comment. USDoD told KrebsOnSecurity their phony application was submitted in November in the CEO's name, and that the application included a contact email address that they controlled -- but also the CEO's real mobile phone number. "When you register they said that to be approved can take at least three months," USDoD said. "I wasn't expected to be approve[d]." But USDoD said that in early December, their email address in the name of the CEO received a reply saying the application had been approved. While the FBI's InfraGard system requires multi-factor authentication by default, users can choose between receiving a one-time code via SMS or email. "If it was only the phone I will be in [a] bad situation," USDoD said. "Because I used the person['s] phone that I'm impersonating."

USDoD said the InfraGard user data was made easily available via an Application Programming Interface (API) that is built into several key components of the website that help InfraGard members connect and communicate with each other. USDoD said after their InfraGard membership was approved, they asked a friend to code a script in Python to query that API and retrieve all available InfraGard user data. "InfraGard is a social media intelligence hub for high profile persons," USDoD said. "They even got [a] forum to discuss things." USDoD acknowledged that their $50,000 asking price for the InfraGard database may be a tad high, given that it is a fairly basic list of people who are already very security-conscious. Also, only about half of the user accounts contain an email address, and most of the other database fields -- like Social Security Number and Date of Birth -- are completely empty. [...] While the data exposed by the infiltration at InfraGard may be minimal, the user data might not have been the true end game for the intruders. USDoD said they were hoping the imposter account would last long enough for them to finish sending direct messages as the CEO to other executives using the InfraGuard messaging portal.

Longtime Slashdot reader UnanimousCoward writes: Forbes has published a transcript of SBF's planned testimony as well as a synopsis which, of course, will not happen now. At no point does he admit fraudulent behavior and does not address the (multi-)billion dollar loans that helped contribute to the flywheel Ponzi scheme. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested yesterday by the Royal Bahamas Police Force. He was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday (today).

Here are the key takeaways from SBF's draft testimony, as highlighted by Forbes: - Bankman-Fried is being ghosted by FTX's court-appointed CEO John Ray.
- Bankman-Fried says that FTX.US general counsel and former Sullivan & Cromwell partner, Ryne Miller, put intense pressure on Bankman-Fried and others to rush into filing for Chapter 11.
- Bankman-Fried believes that John Ray and law firms managing the bankruptcy, including Sullivan and Cromwell, are dusting off the Enron playbook in an effort to reap enormous fees from FTX's bankruptcy.
- The Chapter 11 team is not playing nice with foreign regulators.
- Bankman-Fried thinks that John Ray and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court is bullying the Bahamian government and overstepping its rights as the main domicile for FTX International.
- Bankman-Fried devotes seven pages to a section he calls "Misstatements," detailing instances where John Ray and team are disseminating false and inaccurate information about the companies he created.
- FTX did not have a risk management team.
- Bankman-Fried claims that there are signed Letters of Intent (LOIs) from prospective investors that could recapitalize the exchange.
- Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao orchestrated a negative public relations campaign to bring down FTX.
- Having eliminated FTX as its largest global competitor, Binance is now averaging approximately 70% of global cryptocurrency volume.
- Bankman-Fried wants to set the record straight on false reports of hard partying at FTX and on his own drug usage. He says he has never been drunk in his life, and has been on an antidepressant for the last decade.

China is working on a more than 1 trillion yuan ($143 billion) support package for its semiconductor industry, three sources said, in a major step towards self sufficiency in chips and to counter U.S. moves aimed at slowing its technological advances. Reuters reports: Beijing plans to roll out what will be one of its biggest fiscal incentive packages over five years, mainly as subsidies and tax credits to bolster semiconductor production and research activities at home, said the sources. It signals, as analysts have expected, a more direct approach by China in shaping the future of an industry which has become a geopolitical hot button due to soaring demand for chips and which Beijing regards as a cornerstone of its technological might.

It will also likely further raise concerns in the United States and its allies about China's competition in the semiconductor industry, say analysts. Some U.S. lawmakers are already worried about China's chip production capacity build up. The plan could be implemented as soon as the first quarter of next year [...]. The majority of the financial assistance would be used to subsidize the purchases of domestic semiconductor equipment by Chinese firms, mainly semiconductor fabrication plants, or fabs, they said. Such companies would be entitled to a 20% subsidy on the cost of purchases [...]. In August, President Joe Biden signed the Chips and Science Act, which includes more than $52 billion for U.S. companies producing computer chips, as well as billions more in tax credits to encourage investment in semiconductor manufacturing.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. passed a sweeping set of regulations that aim to choke off China's access to advanced chips, the tools necessary to manufacture years-old designs, and the service and support mechanisms needed to keep chip fabrication systems running smoothly.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New Zealand has introduced a steadily rising smoking age to stop those aged 14 and under from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes in world-first legislation to outlaw smoking for the next generation. New Zealand is believed to be the first country in the world to implement the annually rising smoking age, ensuring tobacco cannot be sold to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. It will be accompanied by a slew of other measures to make smoking less affordable and accessible, including dramatically reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products and forcing them to be sold only through specialty tobacco stores, rather than corner stores and supermarkets.

The country has also increased funding for health services and campaigns, and rolled out quitting services specifically for Mori and Pacific communities. The number of stores legally allowed to sell cigarettes will be reduced to a tenth of their existing levels -- from 6,000 to just 600 nationwide. The laws passed their final reading on Tuesday evening, and will come into force in 2023, as New Zealand attempts to reach its goal of making the country "smoke-free" by 2025. [...] The new laws, however, will not restrict vape sales. Data indicates that at least some New Zealanders haveswapped their nicotine habit from cigarettes to vapes. Associate health minister Ayesha Verrall said at the law's passing on Tuesday: "Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be $5 billion better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations."

"For decades we have permitted tobacco companies to maintain their market share by making their deadly product more and more addictive. It is disgusting and it is bizarre. We have more regulations in this country on the safety of the sale of a sandwich than on a cigarette."

The Royal Bahamas Police Force arrested FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a press statement said. CoinDesk reports: The arrest came after the U.S. filed criminal charges against Bankman-Fried, the statement said, and the nation expects the U.S. to request The Bahamas extradite Bankman-Fried in short order. "As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF's arrest and hold him in custody pursuant to our nation's Extradition Act," the statement, attributed to Attorney General Ryan Pinder, said. "At such time as a formal request for extradition is made, The Bahamas intends to process it promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States."

A tweet from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York confirmed that prosecutors in the U.S. indicted Bankman-Fried, though the indictment remains under seal. In the Bahamas' statement, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said the country would continue pursuing its own investigation into FTX's collapse, alongside the U.S.'s criminal charges. Bankman-Fried was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday.

Tax authorities from Australia, Canada, France, the UK and the USA have conducted a joint probe into "electronic sales suppression software" -- applications that falsify point of sale data to help merchants avoid paying tax on their true revenue. From a report: A Friday announcement from the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (known as the J5), states that the probe "resulted in the arrest of five individuals in the United Kingdom who allegedly designed and sold electronic sales suppression systems internationally." Those responsible allegedly started to export their wares during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"These dodgy sales suppression tools allow retailers to keep a separate set of books and launder the money in one transaction," explained J5 chief and Australian Taxation Office deputy commissioner John Ford. "They conceal and transfer this income anonymously, sometimes offshore."

A little-known phone monitoring app called Xnspy has stolen data from tens of thousands of iPhones and Android devices, the majority whose owners are unaware that their data has been compromised. From a report: Xnspy is one of many so-called stalkerware apps sold under the guise of allowing a parent to monitor their child's activities, but are explicitly marketed for spying on a spouse or domestic partner's devices without their permission. Its website boasts, "to catch a cheating spouse, you need Xnspy on your side," and, "Xnspy makes reporting and data extraction simple for you."

Stalkerware apps, also known as spouseware, are surreptitiously planted by someone with physical access to a person's phone, bypassing the on-device security protections, and are designed to stay hidden from home screens, which makes them difficult to detect. Once installed, these apps will silently and continually upload the contents of a person's phone, including their call records, text messages, photos, browsing history and precise location data, allowing the person who planted the app near-complete access to their victim's data. But new findings show many stalkerware apps are riddled with security flaws and are exposing the data stolen from victims' phones. Xnspy is no different.

South Korea, Japan and the EU see America's electric-vehicle subsidies as discriminating against non-American manufacturers, and are "rebuffing" restrictions on exporting sensitive semiconductor technology to China, reports the Wall Street Journal. (Alternate URL here.)

The EU's executive arm complains that newly-passed U.S. subsidies constitute "a market-distorting boost, tilting the global level playing field and turning a common global objective — fighting climate change — into a zero-sum game." There's a grand bargain to be had here: the U.S. makes its allies eligible for its EV subsidies and those allies join its semiconductor controls. The politics and details of any such bargain are, of course, difficult, maybe insurmountable. Yet such an accommodation, if it happened, would entail almost no economic cost to the U.S. or its allies — and potentially large long-term gains....

The U.S. Treasury Department could use its administrative discretion to phase in the Inflation Reduction Act's provisions or define content to allow more of these manufacturers' products to qualify. It could also interpret "free-trade agreement" to include not just formal bilateral treaties but broader pacts such as the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or the Minerals Security Partnership, both of which include Japan, South Korea, and the European Union but not mainland China or Russia.

If the U.S. bends to its allies on electric vehicles, its allies should bend to the U.S. on semiconductors.... Meanwhile, business as usual entails its own — potentially significant — costs. China's long-term goal is self sufficiency in all advanced technology, including semiconductors. It does business with Western companies until its own national champions can displace them first in China and then abroad. It has already followed the script in high-speed rail, power generation and telecommunications equipment. If China has its way, the market share that South Korean, Japanese and European semiconductor companies are trying to preserve will be gone a few decades from now.

Recently the EU voted to require tech companies like Apple to standardize on USB-C charging ports.

A CNN opinion piece calls this "a hallelujah moment for iPhone owners everywhere." iPhone cords are a very big business: There are reportedly about 1.2 billion active iPhones out in the wild. And if their charging cables need to be replaced once or twice a year as many users attest, at roughly $20 a pop, well, you could just about buy a Twitter a year for that sum.... While the new edict only directly applies to devices sold in the EU, India looks set to follow in Europe's footsteps....

[T]he move is almost certain to serve as the push that gets Apple to finally abandon its bespoke-battery-booster approach for future versions of the world's most popular smartphone. Even Greg Joswiak, the company's global head of marketing, admitted that the EU standardization push means the lifespan of Apple Lightning charging cables is likely finally over. And right on time, given that ten years ago Apple called it the "cable standard for the next decade...." It might even dilute some of the tribal tension between iPhone and Android users, assuming the latter don't lord over us the fact that most of them have already been charging with C for half a decade. (We still have our blue message bubbles, greenies!)

And it might generally reduce the temptation among tech companies, chief among them Apple, to "innovate" by introducing proprietary parts that regularly force an entire domino cascade of costly upgrades. (The fact that every new iPhone seems to be a random millimeter different in size and shape in each direction already means that brand new cases, cradles and screen protectors have to be repurchased along with new handsets, all for the privilege of a few hundred pixels of fresh real estate.) While that process may offer a welcome cash stimulus to the peripherals and accessories industry, it contributes to the massive environmental burden caused by e-waste, estimated at about 60 million tons a year — an amount heavier than the world's heaviest man-made object, the Great Wall of China.

CNBC reports: Chinese technology giant Huawei said Friday it will license its 5G technology to rival handset maker Oppo as it looks to unlock a new revenue stream after its smartphone business was crushed by U.S. sanctions....

Huawei has a massive portfolio of over 100,000 patents globally. It is one of the top patent holders in 5G technology, which is next-generation ultra-fast mobile internet seen as key to underpinning future industries such as artificial intelligence and autonomous cars.... The company previously stated that it expected to earn revenue of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion from licensing its intellectual property between 2019 to 2021. Huawei said that it met its intellectual property revenue expectations for 2021, but did not provide a figure.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: "In an enormous breakthrough for those seeking transparency and accountability to the shadowy surveillance industry, the Swiss Government has been forced to publish the list of export licenses for surveillance technologies and other equipment, including details of their cost and destination," [reports The Unwanted Witness.] "The decision by the Federal Information and Data Protection Commissioner comes on the heels of consistent pressure from Privacy International, Swiss journalists, and several Members of Parliament on policymakers, government officials, and companies in Switzerland over the past year and a half. The commissioner's decision was the result of a FOI challenge filed against the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) for its refusal to reveal information regarding the destination of the pending exports for surveillance technologies."

The beneficiary of this release by SECO is, of course, everyone who's interested in government accountability and transparency, especially when it involves an area of government work that tends to shrouded in often impenetrable secrecy. The most direct beneficiary -- Swiss news agency Tagblatt -- has plenty to say about the release of this information, including how much SECO simply did not want to reveal the countries Swiss surveillance tech providers sell to. (The following was translated by Google Translate, so apologies for the clunky English.) The Seco does not act entirely voluntarily: Our newspaper only received the list after it requested access to the administration in 2013 based on the principle of transparency. At the end of 2014, the federal data protection officer recommended granting access, although Seco wanted to refuse this. [The Data Protection Commissioner] picks [Seco's] arguments to pieces. It didn't even provide a minimal justification. But that's not all: Seco was unable to prove why the announcement of the recipients was affecting Switzerland's foreign policy relations.

The technology these countries acquired from Swiss tech purveyors are IMSI catchers -- cell tower spoofers capable of forcing all phones in the area to connect to it so investigators can locate sought devices or (if enabled) intercept communications. Twenty-one export licenses were issued in 2014, with the list encompassing a long list of human rights abusers. [...] The approved list for full licenses doesn't exactly suggest a whole lot of discretion from Swiss IMSI manufacturers. Nor does it say much about SECO, which allowed these sales (and demonstrations) to happen. The list of denied license applications (which includes Russia, Yemen, and Turkmenistan) suggests some restraint by SECO. But the fact that Swiss spy tech makers requested the licenses shows they are just as willing to sell to terrible governments as other surveillance tech purveyors who've made international headlines repeatedly. (Yes, we're talking about Israel's NSO Group. And, to a lesser extent, Italy's Hacking Team.) "And it's not just IMSI catchers," says Techdirt's Tim Cushing. "Plenty of human rights violators were on the list of potential customers for internet surveillance tech sold by Swiss companies. That those violators were unable to access this tech is largely due to the Snowden leaks, which forced a lot of countries to look more closely at their own spying efforts and surveillance contractors."

"That's a pretty nasty group of customers to want to sell to. And that the companies appear to have been deterred by a series of leaks suggests they were more motivated by potential backlash from the Snowden revelations, rather than any sense of responsibility or propriety."

In closing, Cushing writes: "You don't have to sell to the worst governments in the world. But, like far too many other surveillance tech purveyors, Swiss companies seemed more than willing to sell powerful spy tech to governments they knew with certainty would abuse it."

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: [T]wo women filed a potential class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging the company has ignored critics' and security experts' repeated warnings that the company's AirTag devices are being repeatedly used to stalk and harass people. Both individuals were targets of past abuse from ex-partners and argued in the filing that Apple's subsequent safeguard solutions remain wholly inadequate for consumers. "With a price point of just $29, it has become the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers," reads a portion of the lawsuit, as The New York Times reported [...].

Apple first debuted AirTags in April 2021. Within the ensuing eight months, at least 150 police reports from just eight precincts reviewed by Motherboard explicitly mentioned abusers utilizing the tracking devices to stalk and harass women. In the new lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that one woman's abuser hid the location devices within her car's wheel well. At the same time, the other woman's abuser placed one in their child's backpack following a contentious divorce, according to the suit. Security experts have since cautioned that hundreds more similar situations likely remain unreported or even undetected.

The lawsuit (PDF), published by Ars Technica, cites them as "one of the products that has revolutionized the scope, breadth, and ease of location-based stalking," arguing that "what separates the AirTag from any competitor product is its unparalleled accuracy, ease of use (it fits seamlessly into Apple's existing suite of products), and affordability." The proposed class action lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for owners of iOS or Android devices which have been tracked with an AirTag or are at risk of being stalked. Since AirTags' introduction last year, at least two murders have occurred directly involving using Apple's surveillance gadget, according to the lawsuit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Following Google's beta rollout of the feature in October, passkeys are now hitting Chrome stable M108. "Passkey" is built on industry standards and backed by all the big platform vendors -- Google, Apple, Microsoft -- along with the FIDO Alliance. Google's latest blog says: "With the latest version of Chrome, we're enabling passkeys on Windows 11, macOS, and Android." The Google Password Manager on Android is ready to sync all your passkeys to the cloud, and if you can meet all the hardware requirements and find a supporting service, you can now sign-in to something with a passkey. [...]

Now that this is actually up and running on Chrome 108 and a supported OS, you should be able to see the passkey screen under the "autofill" section of the Chrome settings (or try pasting chrome://settings/passkeys into the address bar). Next up we'll need more websites and services to actually support using a passkey instead of a password to sign in. Google Account support would be a good first step -- right now you can use a passkey for two-factor authentication with Google, but you can't replace your password yet. Everyone's go-to example of passkeys is the passkeys.io demo site, which we have a walkthrough of here.

U.S. telecom providers, under a new FCC order, will have to take "all necessary steps" to block calls from a shady communication company engaged in a mass robocall scam preying on people seeking student loan forgiveness. From a report: The scammer company, called Urth Access, LLC, would reportedly spam users with calls urging them to forfeit their personal information or pay a fee in order to receive up to around $10,000 in student loan debt relief. Many of the scams reportedly referred to the Biden Administration's student loan forgiveness plan to give the messages a semblance of credibility. Though numerous fraudsters took part in the scam, an investigation conducted by the FCC and its private partner YouMail said Urth Access stood apart as the largest, accounting for around 40% of the robocalls in October.

"Scam robocalls try to pull from the headlines to confuse consumers," FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. "Trying to take advantage of people who want help paying off their student loans. Today we're cutting these scammers off so they can't use efforts to provide student loan debt relief as cover for fraud." The new order asks telecommunications companies to cease accepting phone calls coming from Urath Access, or report efforts they are making to limit Urath's reach in an effort to shut down the scams.

Around five million people globally have had their data stolen and sold on the bot market till date, of which 600,000 are from India, making it the worst affected country, according to one of the world's largest VPN serice providers NordVPN. From the report: Bot markets are used by hackers to sell stolen data from victims' devices with bot malware. The study by NordVPN, of Lithuania's Nord Security, said the stolen data included user logins, cookies, digital fingerprints, screenshots and other information, with the average price for the digital identity of a person pegged at 490 Indian rupees($5.95). NordVPN tracked data for the past four years, ever since bot markets were launched in 2018.

"The CBC is reporting that a class action lawsuit against Epic Games over Fortnite being addictive to children will go ahead," writes Slashdot reader lowvisioncomputing. From the report: The suit was first brought to the courts in 2019 by three Quebec parents who claimed that Fortnite was designed to addict its users, many of them children, to the game. According to the original filing, the plaintiffs say their children exhibited troubling behaviors, including not sleeping, not eating, not showering and no longer socializing with their peers. According to the filing, one of the children was diagnosed with an addiction by an on-call doctor at a Quebec clinic, or CLSC, in the Lower St. Lawrence region. It also notes that the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized addictive gaming disorder as a disease in 2018.

Jean-Philippe Caron, one of the CaLex Legal lawyers working on the suit, said the case isn't unlike a 2015 Quebec Superior Court ruling that found tobacco companies didn't warn their customers about the dangers of smoking. "[The game] has design patterns that make sure to always encourage player engagement. You have to understand that children's prefrontal cortices are still developing so that could be part of the explanation for why this game is particularly harmful," he said. The class action will also discuss in-game purchases, namely cosmetic items -- known as skins -- and the game's Battle Pass system, which offers expanded rewards as players level up.

The children allegedly spent excessive amounts of money on V-Bucks -- an in-game currency users buy with real money -- which can be exchanged for skins or used to unlock the Battle Pass. One of the children reportedly spent over $6,000 on skins, while another spent $600 on V-Bucks -- items Superior Court Judge Sylvain Lussier described as "without any tangible value." That may run afoul of Article 1406 of Quebec's civil code, where "serious disproportion between the prestations of the parties" -- meaning, the obligation to provide something in turn -- "creates a presumption of exploitation."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple yesterday announced that end-to-end encryption is coming to even more sensitive types of iCloud data, including device backups, messages, photos, and more, meeting the longstanding demand of both users and privacy groups who have rallied for the company to take the significant step forward in user privacy. iCloud end-to-end encryption, or what Apple calls "Advanced Data Protection," encrypts users' data stored in iCloud, meaning only a trusted device can decrypt and read the data. iCloud data in accounts with Advanced Data Protection can only be read by a trusted device, not Apple, law enforcement, or government entities.

While privacy groups and apps applaud Apple for the expansion of end-to-end encryption in iCloud, governments have reacted differently. In a statement to The Washington Post, the FBI, the largest intelligence agency in the world, said it's "deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only-access encryption pose." Speaking generally about end-to-end encryption like Apple's Advanced Data Protection feature, the bureau said that it makes it harder for the agency to do its work and that it requests "lawful access by design": "This hinders our ability to protect the American people from criminal acts ranging from cyber-attacks and violence against children to drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism," the bureau said in an emailed statement. "In this age of cybersecurity and demands for 'security by design,' the FBI and law enforcement partners need 'lawful access by design.'"

Former FBI official Sasha O'Connell also weighed in, telling The New York Times "it's great to see companies prioritizing security, but we have to keep in mind that there are trade-offs, and one that is often not considered is the impact it has on decreasing law enforcement access to digital evidence."