UK ISP Sky Broadband is monitoring the IP addresses of servers suspected of streaming pirated content to subscribers and supplying that data to an anti-piracy company working with the Premier League. That inside knowledge is then processed and used to create blocklists used by the country's leading ISPs, to prevent subscribers from watching pirated events. An anonymous reader shares the report from Torrent Freak: In recent weeks, an anonymous source shared a small trove of information relating to the systems used to find, positively identity, and then ultimately block pirate streams at ISPs. According to the documents, the module related to the Premier League work is codenamed 'RedBeard.' The activity appears to start during the week football matches or PPV events take place. A set of scripts at anti-piracy company Friend MTS are tasked with producing lists of IP addresses that are suspected of being connected to copyright infringement. These addresses are subsequently dumped to Amazon S3 buckets and the data is used by ISPs to block access to infringing video streams, the documents indicate. During actual event scanning, content is either manually or fingerprint matched, with IP addresses extracted from DNS information related to hostnames in media URLs, load balancers, and servers hosting Electronic Program Guides (EPG), all of which are used by unlicensed IPTV services. The big question then is how the Premier League's anti-piracy partner discovers the initial server IP addresses that it subsequently puts forward for ISP blocking. According to documents reviewed by TF, information comes from three sources -- the anti-piracy company's regular monitoring (which identifies IP addresses and their /24 range), manually entered IP addresses (IP addresses and ports), and a third, potentially more intriguing source -- ISPs themselves. The document revealing this information is not dated but other documents in the batch reference dates in 2021. At the time of publishing date, the document indicates that ISP cooperation is currently limited to Sky Broadband only. TorrentFreak asked Friend MTS if that remains the case or whether additional ISPs are now involved. It appears that instead of monitoring customer IP addresses, Sky is compiling data on which IP addresses subscribers are pulling most data from during (and potentially before) match or event times. Sky then uploads the highest-trafficked IP addresses along with the port the traffic is streamed on to the S3 bucket mentioned above, every five minutes. It is then accessed by the anti-piracy company which, every five minutes, extracts the IP, bandwidth rate, and the port number that bandwidth is on. At the time of the document's publication, the Sky 'Top Talker' threshold for the Premier League's 'RedBeard' module was 100mbps. The IP address information provided by the ISP that exceeds this limit then appears to be cross-referenced by IP address and port number with data obtained during game week scanning at Friend MTS. It is then processed accordingly. Torrent Freak goes on to note that the Premier League is "seeking cooperation from additional ISPs too." "In summary, it appears that Sky subscribers aren't being directly monitored per se, but the servers they draw most bandwidth from are being noted by Sky and that data is being forwarded for anti-piracy enforcement," the report adds. "This means that Sky subscribers' piracy habits are directly providing information to support Premier League, Matchroom Boxing, and Queensbury Promotions blocking efforts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will start asking for permission to enable Personalized Ads in iOS 15, the company's method of serving relevant ads in the App Store and Apple News by analyzing what you read, purchase, and search for on your device. From a report: The company used to collect that information by default, but now it plans to ask for permission. Apple required other developers to seek users' permission with the debut of App Tracking Transparency, so it seems like it's showing that it will hold itself to a similar standard. The Personalized Ads pop-up should show up when you open the App Store if you're running the most recent iOS 15 beta. In the pop-up, Apple writes that the ads will help you discover relevant apps, products, and services while protecting your privacy by using "device-generated identifiers and not linking advertising information to your Apple ID."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's Alibaba Group will invest 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) by 2025 in support of "common prosperity," it said, becoming the latest corporate giant to pledge support for the initiative driven by President Xi Jinping. From a report: Beijing has been encouraging companies to share wealth as part of the effort to ease inequality in the world's second-largest economy. Other companies that have made similar announcements include Tencent Holdings, which also pledged 100 billion yuan, and Geely Automobile. The government-backed Zhejiang News website said Alibaba's funds will go towards areas such as subsidies for small and medium-sized enterprises and improving insurance protection for gig economy workers such as couriers and ride-hailing drivers. It will also set up a 20 billion yuan "common prosperity development fund", the newspaper said, with Alibaba confirming the report.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first AR/VR headset that Apple has been in development will need to be wirelessly tethered to an iPhone or another Apple device to unlock full functionality, reports The Information. MacRumors: It will be similar to the WiFi-only version of the Apple Watch, which requires an iPhone connection to work. The headset is meant to wirelessly communicate with another Apple device, which will handle most of the powerful computing. According to The Information, Apple recently completed work on the 5-nanometer custom chips that are set to be used in the headset, and that's where the connectivity detail comes from. Apple has completed the key system on a chip (SoC) that will power the headset, along with two additional chips. All three chips have hit the tape-out stage, so work on the physical design has wrapped up and it's now time for trial production.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, 48 years ago. I was 18 that year. I was on the edge of awareness for what it meant. I don't remember a time when abortion was not legal, not in a way that could have affected me. We're all going to learn about it now.

Envoy John Kerry's 'it's more important than politics' appeal falls on deaf ears.

ASUS has just four letters to sell you on its latest creator-focused notebooks: OLED. From a report: The company is bringing OLED screens to all of its new models, a move meant to differentiate them in the increasingly crowded PC market. Compared to traditional LCD screens, OLED offers deeper blacks levels, vastly better contrast, and more responsiveness. Even today, as LCDs have evolved to be brighter and faster, OLED offers a more pronounced visual "pop." We've been seeing notebooks with OLED for years, like on the XPS 15 and ZenBook, but they've typically been positioned as a premium feature for select models. Now ASUS is trying to make its name synonymous with OLED, so much so that it's bringing it to new mid-range notebooks like the VivoBook Pro 14X and 16X. It's also touting the first 16-inch 4K OLED HDR screens on notebooks across several models: the ProArt Studiobook Pro, ProArt Studiobook and the Vivobook Pro. Befitting its name, you can expect to see the fastest hardware on the market in the StudioBook Pro 16 OLED (starting at $2,500). It'll be powered by H-series Ryzen 5000 processors, 3rd-gen Intel Xeon chips and NVIDIA's professional-grade RTX A2000 and A5000 GPUs. And if you don't need all of that power, there's also the Studiobook 16 OLED ($2,000), which has the same Ryzen chips, Intel Core i7 CPUs and either RTX 3070 or 3060 graphics. Both notebooks will be equipped with 4K OLED HDR screens that reach up to 550 nits and cover 100 percent of DCI-P3 color gamut. They'll also sport ASUS Dial, a new rotary accessory located at the top of their trackpads, offering similar functionality to Microsoft's forgotten Surface Dial.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WhatsApp didn't fully explain to Europeans how it uses their data as called for by EU privacy law, Ireland's Data Protection Commission said on Thursday. The regulator hit the messaging app with a fine of 225 million euros, about $267 million. From a report: Partly at issue is how WhatsApp share information with parent company Facebook, according to the commission. The decision brings an end to a GDPR inquiry the privacy regulator started in December 2018. WhatsApp said it disagrees with the decision and plans to appeal. "We have worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive and will continue to do so," a WhatsApp spokesperson said via email.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While vocal app developers accused Apple last week of spinning a lawsuit settlement into an App Store change that was barely a change at all, the company appears to be making a true, if small concession today: Apple says it will let developers of "reader" apps (think Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon's Kindle app) directly link their customers to their own sign-up website, where they could potentially skirt Apple's in-app payment system (and its 30 percent cut) entirely, in those cases where they haven't already. From a report: In a press release, Apple claims that the move will close an investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), and that it'll only apply to those sorts of "reader" apps right now -- a category that was originally designed by Apple to placate companies like Netflix and Hulu by allowing them to let users simply sign into their existing account instead of signing up for a new subscription via the App Store (and having to pay Apple's fees). The JFTC has confirmed the agreement in a press release of its own, saying that the move by Apple "would eliminate the suspected violation of the Antimonopoly Act." The commission, which has been investigating Apple since 2016, says the company has pledged to report on the status of app review transparency once a year for the next three years. According to the JFTC, Apple proposed changing its app review guidelines in response to the investigation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: An anonymous reader Days before Christmas in 2015, Juniper Networks alerted users that it had been breached. In a brief statement, the company said it had discovered "unauthorized code" in one of its network security products, allowing hackers to decipher encrypted communications and gain high-level access to customers' computer systems. Further details were scant, but Juniper made clear the implications were serious: It urged users to download a software update "with the highest priority." More than five years later, the breach of Juniper's network remains an enduring mystery in computer security, an attack on America's software supply chain that potentially exposed highly sensitive customers including telecommunications companies and U.S. military agencies to years of spying before the company issued a patch. Those intruders haven't yet been publicly identified, and if there were any victims other than Juniper, they haven't surfaced to date. But one crucial detail about the incident has long been known -- uncovered by independent researchers days after Juniper's alert in 2015 -- and continues to raise questions about the methods U.S. intelligence agencies use to monitor foreign adversaries. The Juniper product that was targeted, a popular firewall device called NetScreen, included an algorithm written by the National Security Agency. Security researchers have suggested that the algorithm contained an intentional flaw -- otherwise known as a backdoor -- that American spies could have used to eavesdrop on the communications of Juniper's overseas customers. NSA declined to address allegations about the algorithm. Juniper's breach remains important -- and the subject of continued questions from Congress -- because it highlights the perils of governments inserting backdoors in technology products. "As government agencies and misguided politicians continue to push for backdoors into our personal devices, policymakers and the American people need a full understanding of how backdoors will be exploited by our adversaries," Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said in a statement to Bloomberg. He demanded answers in the last year from Juniper and from the NSA about the incident, in letters signed by 10 or more members of Congress.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Locast has announced that it is suspending its TV streaming service starting today, following a court ruling earlier this week in a lawsuit from ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, which jointly sued the nonprofit service shortly after it launched. From a report: "As a non-profit, Locast was designed from the very beginning to operate in accordance with the strict letter of the law, but in response to the court's recent rulings, with which we respectfully disagree, we are hereby suspending operations, effective immediately," an email to Locast users sent out this morning reads. Locast was launched in 2019 as an internet-based alternative to over-the-air television, rebroadcasting local, free over-the-air signals over the internet to users in those areas. Unlike Aereo, a similar service that was shut down after a lawsuit ruled it was violating copyright by rebroadcasting over-the-air networks online, Locast relied on a loophole, using its status as a nonprofit to retransmit broadcasts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday, eight Indian banks announced that they are rolling out -- or about to roll out -- a system called Account Aggregator to enable consumers to consolidate all their financial data in one place. From a report: The objective of Account Aggregator (AA) is to aggregate all financial information of an individual, said M Rajeshwar Rao, Deputy Governor of India's central bank -- Reserve Bank of India -- at a virtual event Thursday. The new system makes it possible for banks, tax authorities, insurers, and other finance firms to aggregate data of customers -- who have provided their consent -- to get better understanding about their potential customers, make informed decisions and ensure smoother transactions. Users who provide consent -- and it only takes a few taps to do so -- will be able to share their financial information from one Account Aggregator participant to another through a centralized API-based repository. Users get to decide for how long they wish their data to be shared with a particular Account Aggregator participant.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Europe's top court has struck what could be a mortal blow to the practice of zero rating -- where mobile operators exempt data associated with specific services, such as Spotify or Facebook, from counting towards users' overall data caps. From a report: In a Thursday ruling, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against the German providers Vodafone and Telekom, saying their "zero tariff" options broke the EU's net-neutrality law -- legislation designed to ensure that operators treat Internet traffic equally, without favoring certain online providers due to commercial considerations. This is not the first time the court has weighed in on the topic, but the ruling is its most definitive repudiation of the practice of zero rating.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BTW, for people who are into news cycles, the Repubs changing the subject from Afghanistan to abortion, well that's kind of a gift to Biden. If you look at the world that way, that is.

The Federal Trade Commission has unanimously voted to ban the spyware maker SpyFone and its chief executive Scott Zuckerman from the surveillance industry, the first order of its kind, after the agency accused the company of harvesting mobile data on thousands of people and leaving it on the open internet. From a report: The agency said SpyFone "secretly harvested and shared data on people's physical movements, phone use, and online activities through a hidden device hack," allowing the spyware purchaser to "see the device's live location and view the device user's emails and video chats." SpyFone is one of many so-called "stalkerware" apps that are marketed under the guise of parental control but are often used by spouses to spy on their partners. The spyware works by being surreptitiously installed on someone's phone, often without their permission, to steal their messages, photos, web browsing history, and real-time location data. The FTC also charged that the spyware maker exposed victims to additional security risks because the spyware runs at the "root" level of the phone, which allows the spyware to access off-limits parts of the device's operating system. A premium version of the app included a keylogger and "live screen viewing," the FTC says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.