With Google freezing the Android P APIs yesterday, both major mobile platforms have shown their hand for 2018. The freeze comes as Google released "Beta 2", which is really the third Developer Preview release of Android P issued so far. The API freeze means developers can now compile and submit apps compatible with Android P …

BSides London "I would be surprised if all major intel agencies didn't have people embedded in Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and major cloud provers," infosec guru Mikko Hyppönen told a packed audience at BSides conference in London on Wednesday. Hyppönen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure, made the comment during a well- …

A Google-backed think tank report has called on UK.gov to, erm, help the local tech startup scene flourish in a post-Brexit Britain by agreeing to underwrite a newbie business' first customer contract. "Too little attention has been paid to the delivery risk taken on by the first customer of a startup," wrote policy wonks at …

UK Foreign Secretary and Beano* character wrought in flesh, Boris Johnson, put tech boffins and conservationists in a room together today and asked them to come up with a way of combating illegal wildlife trade. Representatives from the likes of Google and Amazon were regaled with stories from the Zoological Society of London …

Comment When several "leaked" reports appear to show that Apple is focusing on quality, not features, it's reasonable to conclude that Apple is concerned the world perceives a quality problem. We heard the message via Axios in January that Apple was focusing on reliability rather than new features. And again at the weekend. But wait …

If you're sysadmin of an organisation using Google Groups and G Suite, you need to revisit your configuration to make sure you aren't leaking internal information. That advice comes from Kenna Security, which on June 1 said it found 31 per cent of a sample of 9,600 organisations leaking sensitive e-mail information. The …

Special report DNS overseer ICANN has tried to put a brave face on it but even for an organization with a self-importance that often leads it down a path to delusion, being told that your most important contract is effectively unenforceable has to sting. This week, a German court in Bonn informed the organization, which oversees the naming …

Max Schrems, the thorn in Facebook’s side, has returned to launch the first challenges under the EU’s new data protection laws. The complaints, filed on the day Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force, take aim at what he describes as Google and Facebook’s “forced consent”. Under the GDPR, when …

Android app developers have hours left to decide whether to change their business models or leave Google's ad ecosystem because of its stubborn stance on the EU's new Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations, due to come into effect tomorrow. Devs tell us uncertainty over whether they comply with GDPR is forcing …

A former director of consumer rights group Which is trying to extract “somewhere between £1bn and £3bn” from Google on behalf of 4.38 million Brits over the naughty placement of advertising cookies. The High Court in London, England, has heard legal arguments this week about whether Richard Lloyd's claim against Google should …

New Zealand courts are asking Google to take down content associated with current criminal proceedings, to the usual and resounding “No” from the Chocolate Factory. In a row that's been bubbling along for months, lawyers and judges in New Zealand have repeatedly complained that Google retains stories and images subject to …

Updated Google and the Victorian Department of Education have set parents, students, teachers, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner a poser: at what point does a feature become a vulnerability? Or just too creepy to put in front of kids? Victoria's teachers and students have adopted a system based on Google Apps …

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has added his voice to a growing number of government officials calling for large tech companies to be investigated for potential antitrust violations. Asked whether Google was abusing its market dominance as a monopoly, Mnuchin told CNBC on Monday "these are issues that the Justice …

Comment In the same way it has become de rigueur to slag off Facebook for its many privacy sins while billions still dump their data into the service, it's also pretty trendy to pretend that blockchain, a digital ledger that records transactions publicly and permanently, offers answers to a new and improved decentralised web that leaves …

Google has tweaked Chrome 66 to make the new feature that silences auto-playing videos less aggressive. The change was made because while the updated browser silenced videos as intended, it also muted games and sites that use audio for alerts and other purposes That’s not what Chrome’s developers intended: the plan was to …

Two US senators have asked the nation's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take another look at Google's location harvesting. Democrat Senators Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey fired off their request-that-can't-be-ignored (PDF) late last week, asking the FTC to “open an investigation into the potential deceptive acts and …

Android developers are reluctantly considering putting Google ads on ice because of uncertainty over whether they'll be GDPR-compliant, cutting off what in many cases is their sole revenue source. With 10 days to go before GDPR, developers told us they are still waiting for an SDK that Google promised them, one they can't …

Back in February 2018, Google's Project Zero went public with a Microsoft Edge bug that Redmond couldn't fix in time for its next patch release. Now, the Google researcher - Ivan Fratric - has provided a detailed technical explanation of the problem and says Microsoft's fix might not be adequate. Fratric discovered that an …