Hashtag Trending Sept. 19 – New child protection law in California; accidental money; Canadian police raids hacker

California introduces new digital child protection law, Google accidentally sends a blogger $250,000, and Canadian law enforcement raids a hacker.

Hashtag Trending on Amazon Alexa Google Podcasts badge - 200 px wide

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday, September 19, and I’m your host, Tom Li.

California has become the first U.S. state to protect children from being profiled in a harmful way using their data. According to TechXplore, A new bill introduced in the state requires companies to protect the children’s wellbeing by implementing an age-appropriate design code and requires them to submit a data protection impact assessment before issuing a new service targeted at children. Although the law is meant to do good, it isn’t without opponents, including the Entertainment Software Association, which said it could be overly inclusive, and affect more platforms than necessary.

Source: TechXplore

Google had accidentally sent a blogger $250,000 due to “human error.” The slipup was discovered in a tweet when the blogger tweeted that Google had randomly transferred $250,000 into his account. The unintended recipient kept the money safe and waited for a response from the company, which Google sent after almost a month. When asked, Google didn’t tell NPR how the error happened, only that it planned to get the money back. The blogger, who’s also a security engineer, didn’t see a connection between his job and Google, and chalked it up as a pure fluke.

Source: Business Insider

Canadian law enforcement has apparently raided a somewhat prolific hacker and seized his assets. According to Aubrey Cottle, a Canadian hacker claiming to be associated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous, the Ontario Provincial Police had seized his equipment, including PCs, phones and servers. Additionally, he was evicted and is now homeless. Cottle had amassed a following on TikTok, where he shared some of his hacking activities. He had claimed responsibility for a few data breaches, including leaking the data from the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo.

Source: Cyberscoop

The video game industry experienced a major cybersecurity incident when hackers leaked early information about GTA 6, a highly anticipated video game set to be released in the future. Some considered this to be the biggest data breach in the industry’s history. Leaked details not only include gameplay, but also the game’s highly guarded source code. According to the leaker, Rockstar Games, the game’s developer, has reached out to them on social media. The alleged hackers say they’re looking to negotiate a deal.

Source: TechCrunch

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada
Tom Li
Tom Li
Telecommunication and consumer hardware are Tom's main beats at IT Business. He loves to talk about Canada's network infrastructure, semiconductor products, and of course, anything hot and new in the consumer technology space. You'll also occasionally see his name appended to articles on cloud, security, and SaaS-related news. If you're ever up for a lengthy discussion about the nuances of each of the above sectors or have an upcoming product that people will love, feel free to drop him a line at [email protected].

Follow this Podcast

More #Hashtag Trending