Apple

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A TechCrunch investigation has found that iOS apps from banks, airlines and retailers are recording and sending back users' every interaction with those apps, without permission or notification. Companies including Expedia, Hotels.com and Air Canada use session recording tools from Glassbox without informing their customers and – in the case of Air Canada – without properly hiding sensitive data such as passport and credit card numbers


Amazon Marketplace sellers in Vietnam are being asked to record a five-second video of their face as a mandatory step in setting up their retailer accounts on the platform (Buzzfeed News). There's apparently no way of opting out of this or deleting the video once recorded, and civil liberties groups in the US say that "it would not be a surprise if Amazon was using facial recognition" to prevent sellers from setting up multiple accounts.

Spotify, the world's most popular music streaming service, has announced that, for almost the first time, it's making a profit from its 96 million paying subscribers (The Verge). The Swedish company's operating profit clocked in at €94 million (£82.5 million), but it's forecasting losses in the coming year and is investing heavily in building its podcasting platform.

The launch of the UK branch of American rightwing student organisation Turning Point USA has descended into a slapdash farce following the appearance of a swarm of parody Twitter accounts impersonating the organisation with varying degrees of success (WIRED). The result was a surreal farrago of misunderstanding and noise. Fake accounts would call out Turning Point’s genuine handle as a fake set up by antifa extremists, and sometimes would even go as far as exposing other fellow fakes as fakes.

Researchers have shown that honey bees can add and subtracts – an ability previously only associated with a handful of birds and primates (Science). 14 bees were trained to understand the colours blue and yellow as symbols representing addition and subtraction, and were able to successfully find a reward by finding a path with one more or one less coloured shape between 63 and 72 per cent of the time.

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