Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

The U.S. Treasury Department has "very serious concerns" about Facebook's new Libra cryptocurrency, according to Secretary Steve Mnuchin "Libra could be misused by money launderers and terrorist financiers," he told reporters at a White House press conference Monday....

Alan Turing, the British mathematician known for his World War II code-breaking exploits and for a test to distinguish between human and machine intelligence, will be on 50-pound notes in the UK by the end of 2021 The Bank of England, which made the announcement Monday, explained that Turing, who died in 1954, was chosen from a field of 989 eligibl...

A security researcher has found a flaw in the popular video conferencing app Zoom that could be used to turn on the camera on a Macintosh computer without a user's permission The vulnerability allows any website to forcibly join a user to a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without a user's permission, explained Jonathan Leitschuh in a ...

State motor vehicle departments have become a rich source of facial recognition data for and FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Researchers at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology used public records requests to gather a cache of documents that show the agencies have turned state DMV databases into the foundation of a vas...

Security researchers on Monday reported that Chinese hackers are the likely perpetrators of a series of cyberattacks against telecommunications companies around the world The campaign, dubbed "Operation Soft Cell," has been active since 2012, according to Cybereason, an endpoint security company based in Boston....

A Democrat and a Republican on Monday filed a U.S. Senate bill to require companies to report to financial regulators and to the public what consumer data they collect and how they leverage it for profit "When a big tech company says its product is free, consumers are the ones being sold," said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

Facebook's plans to mint its own digital coin next year will test the company's consumer credibility. After being savaged for months for its cavalier attitude toward users' privacy, the social network will be asking those same users to trust its new cryptocurrency The currency, called "Libra," will be stashed in a digital wallet, the first product ...

Account hijacking has become a nettlesome problem at Instagram so it has decided to do something about it. The social media company on Monday said it has begun testing a simpler method for users to reclaim their compromised accounts The move, first reported by Motherboard, allows users locked out of their hacked accounts to ask for a six-digit code...

A study that estimates Google last year raked in US$4.7 billion from news content has drawn widespread criticism. That $4.7 billion is a conservative estimate, according to the News Media Alliance, the news industry trade group that released the study Monday. That's because the estimate doesn't take into account Google's advertising revenue from p...

Microsoft whetted the appetite of power-hungry Xbox gamers at its E3 preview in Los Angeles on Sunday, with new details about its next-generation gaming console code-named "Project Scarlett." Expected to arrive in time for the 2020 holiday season, the new Xbox will have a custom-designed AMD processor based on the latest Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA techn...

Apple dangled the next versions of iOS, macOS and watchOS before developers' eyes during Monday's keynote event at its World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose, California In this round of operating system upgrades, Apple seems focused on improvements....

Privacy, a new muscular Mac Pro workstation, and the debut of iPadOS were topline items Monday at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose, California During its more than two-hour presentation at the forum, Apple emphasized new features in its products aimed at protecting users' data and privacy....

Apple on Tuesday refreshed its iPod touch line of media players with a faster processor, greater storage capacity and improved communications features The new iPod is built on Apple's A10 Fusion chip, the same processor used in the iPhone 7. According to Apple, the power upgrade delivers two times faster performance than previous models and three t...

The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday announced a pilot project using self-driving trucks. It will conduct the two-week experiment in collaboration with TuSimple, an autonomous driving technology company based in San Diego TuSimple's contract with the postal service calls for one of the company's self-driving trucks to make five round trips hauling US...

Next-generation 5G mobile communications technology could have a harmful impact on weather forecasting in the United States, based on expert testimony presented before a U.S. House committee during a hearing on the future of weather forecasting Interference from 5G wireless phones could reduce the accuracy of weather forecasts by 30 percent, said N...

Many users of Facebook's WhatsApp messaging software were scrambling to patch the program on Tuesday, in response to news of a flaw that allowed spyware to be installed on mobile phones running Android and iOS "This new type of attack is deeply worrying and shows how even the most trusted mobile apps and platforms can be vulnerable," said Mike Camp...

The United States Supreme Court on Monday gave thumbs up for a class action antitrust lawsuit to proceed against Apple for alleged monopolistic practices at its App Store In the case, Apple Inc. v. Pepper et al., the consumer plaintiffs maintain the Cupertino, California, company has monopolized the retail market for the sale of apps, and that it u...

Google showed off its chops in artificial intelligence and machine learning, renewed its commitment to giving users greater control over their data, and introduced a new economically priced smartphone during a keynote presentation at its annual I/O conference held in Mountain View, California, on Tuesday "They were there to hammer home the point th...

Apple plans to introduce a boatload of new apps, features and development tools at its World Wide Developers Conference next month, Bloomberg reported Monday As it does every year, Apple will use the WWDC, set to begin June 3, to reveal the next versions of operating systems for its hardware products....

These could be the worst of times for high-end flagship smartphones Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday told Alphabet shareholders that his company's flagship phones, the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, released last fall, had encountered some "year over year headwinds."