Tag: accounts

  • Donald Trump to return to Facebook, Instagram after two-year ban

    Donald Trump to return to Facebook, Instagram after two-year ban

    Donald Trump will be allowed back on to Facebook and Instagram after Meta announced it would be ending its two-year suspension of his social media accounts.

    The ban will end “in the coming weeks,” Meta said. In a statement, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said the public “should be able to hear what their politicians are saying.”

    The former US president was indefinitely suspended from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots in 2021.

    The social media giant had acted following Trump’s “praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol,” Clegg said. “The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances,” he added.

    Clegg said a review had now found that Trump’s accounts no longer represented a serious risk to public safety. However, owing to Trump’s past, he would now face intensified penalties for any offences in the future.

    Meta’s Oversight Board, a body it set up to review moderation rulings, said that the decision to reinstate Trump on its platforms “sat with Meta alone; the board did not have a role in the decision.”

    The board had already informed Meta that a review of Trump’s suspension was necessary.

    It encouraged Meta to be open and to offer more details about new laws protecting public figures so that it could assess how they were being applied.

  • Hackers put 200 million Twitter users’ private information for sale on dark web

    Hackers put 200 million Twitter users’ private information for sale on dark web

    Anyone can now download the data of more than 200 million Twitter users for free.

    According to Privacy Affairs‘ security researchers, who confirmed the database that’s currently posted on a hacker forum, this most recent data dump, which contains account names, handles, creation dates, follower counts, and email addresses, turns out to be the same — albeit cleaned up — leak reported last month that affected more than 400 million Twitter accounts.

    According to Privacy Affairs CEO and founder Miklos Zoltan, the removal of duplicate accounts is what caused the number of accounts to be cut in half. But this time, he added, “the data is available for download by anyone for free, as opposed to being marketed for sale at $200,000, as it was in December.”

    According to Zoltan’s blog article detailing the breach, some of the well-known individuals and companies in the new 63GB database leak include Donald Trump Jr., Google CEO Sundar Pichai, SpaceX, the US National Basketball Association, CBS Media, and the World Health Organization.

    There is no information on whether the Christmas Day Twitter account hack of British Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is connected. Miscreants hijacked Keegan’s account in that instance, altered her profile photo to one of Elon Musk, and sent out a string of tweets endorsing cryptocurrency.

    The exposed account owners are still at risk even if the disclosed data does not contain users’ phone numbers, physical addresses, or passwords, according to Zoltan.

    “Privacy Affairs cybersecurity experts reviewed the published data and believe this latest leak could lead to social engineering attacks and doxxing.”

    The genuine names and locations of individuals can be ascertained by combining the hacked email addresses connected to Twitter accounts with other publicly accessible data. Additionally, nation state goons and criminals continue to use phishing emails as a successful entry point for social engineering attacks.

    Of course, spammers or con artists can also utilise the listed email addresses; all they need to do is persuade one victim to click on a harmful link.

    Researchers cautioned that despite this week’s data leak having fewer accounts, it may be more dangerous because the thieves are giving away the entire information for free.

    “It is not certain at this moment how exactly this data was obtained,” Zoltan noted. “The most likely method used could have been the abuse of an application programming interface (API) vulnerability.”

    The data was allegedly hacked in 2021 due to a security flaw that Twitter claimed to have closed last year.

  • Twitter sues Indian government over content removal directives

    Twitter sues Indian government over content removal directives

    Twitter has sued the Indian government to challenge some of its takedown orders, a source familiar with the matter revealed, further escalating the tension between the American social giant and India.

    In its lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Karnataka High Court, Twitter alleges that New Delhi has abused its power by ordering it to remove several tweets from its platform.

    The lawsuit follows a rough year and a half for Twitter in India, a key overseas market for the firm, where it has been asked to take down hundreds of accounts and tweets, many of which critics argue were objected because they denounced the Indian government’s policies and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

    Twitter partially complied with the requests but sought to fight back against many challenges. Under India’s new IT rules, which went into effect last year, Twitter has little to no room left to individually challenge the takedown orders.

    The tension between the two was apparent on May 24 last year, when Delhi police, controlled by India’s central government, visited two offices of Twitter — in the national capital state of Delhi and Gurgaon, in the neighboring state of Haryana — to seek more information about Twitter’s rationale to label one of the tweets by ruling partly BJP spokesperson as “manipulated media.”

    Delhi police said it had received a complaint about the classification of the spokesperson’s tweet and visited the offices to serve Twitter India’s head a notice of the inquiry. In a statement, the police said Twitter India’s managing director’s replies on the subject had been “very ambiguous.”

    Twitter at the time described the episode as “intimidation.”

    The company has “concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules,” it said.

    Twitter India managing director resigned from the firm last year.

    Twitter is not the first tech giant to sue the Indian government. WhatsApp sued New Delhi last year, challenging new regulations that could allow authorities to make people’s private messages “traceable,” and conduct mass surveillance.

    It’s unclear if the new lawsuit will impact Twitter’s proposed acquisition by Elon Musk.

  • Assets beyond known sources of income: NAB begins probe against Farah Khan

    Assets beyond known sources of income: NAB begins probe against Farah Khan

    The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday ordered an inquiry against Farhat Shahzadi alias Farah Khan following allegations of accumulation of illegal assets beyond known sources of income, ARY News reported.

    In a press statement, the anti-graft watchdog has directed the DG NAB Lahore to conduct an inquiry against Farhat Shahzadi alias Farah Khan, a close friend of former prime minister’s wife Bushra Bibi, over allegations of illegal assets beyond known sources of income, money laundering and maintaining various accounts in the name of different businesses.

    “Huge turnover amounting to Rs847 million has been found in Farah’s account during last three years, which does not commensurate with her stated account profile,” the anti-corruption body said in a press release and added that these credits were received in Farah Khan’s personal account and withdrawn immediately within a short time period.

    The NAB further said: “While reviewing the income tax returns of Farhat Shahzadi, it was allegedly observed that her assets have significantly increased form the year 2018 onwards for unknown reasons.”

    Moreover, Farhat Shahzadi also found travelling to foreign jurisdictions; 9 times to the USA and six times to UAE, it added.

    FARAH KHAN DENIES ALLEGATIONS

    Earlier, Farah Khan has denied allegations against her, saying she never interfered in the governmental affairs, days after the opposition blamed her for having a role in transfer and postings in the Punjab province.

    The clarification from Farah Khan, who is considered close to former first lady Bushra Bibi, came after members from opposition parties and estranged PTI leader Aleem Khan blamed that she used to play her role in transfer of officials in the Punjab province.