Attempts to bring up GCash on the Google Play Store earlier in the day brought back errors or, in the case of a web search, led to a Play Store page saying, “We’re sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server.”

GCash posted on Facebook and X that it was “closely working with Google” to update some of the app’s features and make it available on the Play Store again.

The company did not specify what features were being updated, and did not give an estimated time for the return of the GCash app to the Google Play Store.

Existing Android GCash users can still use their versions of the app without issues. GCash also assured users that “accounts and funds are safe and secure.”

The GCash app is still available on the Apple App Store and on Huawei’s App Gallery. The company also reminded prospective users looking for the Android version not to download the app or install a version of it through sideloading from untrusted sources.

– Rappler.com

Jurors found for Epic on all counts, a court filing showed, after more than a month of trial in Epic’s lawsuit, which accused Google of taking action to quash competitors and charge unduly high fees of up to 30% to app developers. The court in January will begin work on what remedies to implement.

The ruling marks a stunning defeat for Google, which alongside Apple operates one of the world’s largest app stores. If the ruling holds, it has the potential to give developers more sway over how their apps are distributed and how they profit off them.

Google said it would appeal. “We will continue to defend the Android business model and remain deeply committed to our users, partners, and the broader Android ecosystem,” Wilson White, vice president of government affairs and public policy at Google, said in an emailed statement.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney on Monday cheered the ruling on social media site X, calling out “the Google Play monopoly.”

Lawyers for the two companies made their final arguments on Monday morning, December 11, and the federal judge handed the case to the jury less than four hours earlier, with instructions that a decision must be unanimous.

Among Epic’s allegations were that Google illegally ties together its Play store and billing service, meaning developers were required to use both to have their apps included in the store.

While the Play store represents a much smaller chunk of Google’s revenue compared to its massively profitable search business, it is symbolically important as the central gatekeeper to billions of mobile phones and tablets.

Google may be compelled to allow for more app stores on Android-powered devices and lose revenue from the cut it takes out of in-app purchases.

“(Today’s verdict) proves that Google’s app store practices are illegal and they abuse their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition and reduce innovation,” Epic said in a statement on its website.

Google accused of deleting messages

“The trial has shone a very bright light on what Google has done to impair the competition,” a lawyer for Epic, Gary Bornstein, told jurors earlier in the day, adding Google “systematically blocks” alternative app stores on the company’s Play store.

Among the more sensational allegations were that Google had a system for deleting texts and internal messages for the purpose of concealing its anticompetitive behavior. An attorney for Epic instructed jurors on Monday that they could assume the content of the deleted messages was pertinent to the case and “would have been unfavorable to Google.”

Google has denied wrongdoing, arguing that it competes “intensely on price, quality, and security” against Apple’s App Store.

A lawyer for Google, Jonathan Kravis, told jurors that “Google does not want to lose 60 million Android users to Apple every year.” Google lowered its fee structure to compete with Apple, Kravis said.

“This is not the behavior of a monopolist,” he said.

Google settled related claims from dating app maker Match before the trial started. The tech giant also settled related antitrust claims by US states and consumers under terms that have not been made public.

Epic lodged a similar antitrust case against Apple in 2020, but a US judge largely ruled in favor of Apple in September 2021.

Epic has asked the US Supreme Court to revive key claims in the Apple case, and Apple is fighting part of a ruling for Epic that would require changes to App Store rules.

Epic purposefully violated Play store rules by skirting its billing systems allowing for customers to make in-app purchases directly with Epic, an attorney for the gamemaker said on Monday. As a result, Google banned Fortnite and Epic filed its suit in response. – Rappler.com

According to reports, files users put on Drive went missing or, at times, the files were missing the most recent data and reverting to older save states.

As 9to5 Google explained in its report, Google Drive users would encounter issues retrieving the latest version of files they had saved – which in the case of businesses could be devastating.

“The issue simply eliminates the data from the account, almost reverting the account back to before that data was made. In some cases, spreadsheet data would be missing from recent weeks, months, or years – but present from a former date,” their report said.

Google, on its community forums, said it was investigating the issue, which was “impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users” using versions 84.0.0.0 to 84.0.4.0 of the desktop app.

Google recommended not disconnecting the account within Drive for desktop, and not deleting or moving the app data folder. They did, however, add that making a copy of the app data folder was recommended.

The app data folder is located here on Windows and MacOS:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS

Google did not release a timeframe as yet for any possible fixes. – Rappler.com

Nothing says it is the first mobile company to “offer a solution to one of the biggest frustrations between Android and iOS users.” While users can freely send messages between iOS and Android using other apps, the iPhone’s native iMessage app is platform-exclusive. 

Nothing Chats is powered by the messaging platform Sunbird, which in April 2023, had a waitlist that reached 100,000 users. 

Nothing explained to The Verge how the system works. Users’ iCloud credentials are stored on Sunbird’s “encrypted database,” which is then linked to its Mac Minis in the US or Europe acting as a relay server. The user’s message is routed through Sunbird, and then relayed to the recipient iMessage user. 

The routing information is important to know as users would need to decide whether they would trust Sunbird in handling their data, and their privacy policy. Sunbird told The Verge that account information is deleted after two weeks of inactivity. 

Play Video

Nothing, in its announcement, also said “Messages are not stored on Sunbird’s servers and are only live on your device – once a message is delivered, it can only be recovered locally from your personal device.”

Nothing Phone 2 users in the US, EU, Canada, or UK can download the app on Play Store, log-in with their Apple ID username, and start messaging. Nothing says that the app, and Sunbird have end-to-end messaging encryption, meaning Nothing or Sunbird can read the messages being sent to and fro. 

The Verge, citing the Washington Post, noted what features work such as showing when you’re typing, and what doesn’t yet such as editing messages. Nothing has said that it is working on bringing in more features. 

“We believe in windows, not walls. If messaging services are dividing phone users, then we want to break those barriers down,” Nothing said. 

The Nothing Phone, the first version of which was launched in 2022, became popular for its transparent back design, and was noted for its price, performance, and camera. – Rappler.com

One such sector is finance, where blockchain’s decentralized nature has enabled it to transform how transactions are conducted, eliminating bureaucratic red tape and streamlining some processes associated with traditional banks. Of the many promises of the technology, its potential for financial inclusivity is perhaps what would prove to be most beneficial for Filipinos.

UniPass Wallet, a blockchain startup which launched locally in October, wants to fulfill that potential by providing an accessible and affordable payments solution to groups that need them the most, such as freelancers and small business owners. This self-custodial smart contract wallet allows users to make cross-border remittances – sending money to family and friends in other countries, in other words – conveniently and efficiently using crypto.

“We firmly believe in the unrestricted and seamless flow of assets, empowering individuals and institutions to transcend boundaries effortlessly,” said Lixin Liu, CEO of Account Labs, the Singapore-based firm behind UniPass Wallet.

Liu emphasizes that his goal with UniPass Wallet is to put control of assets back to users and away from banks and platforms. Such models are currently gaining traction in the crypto space as it looks to regain public trust after the high-profile demise of FTX last year.

UniPass Wallet, however, as mentioned previously, is a crypto wallet, not an exchange.

The app is built on the idea of making it easier and more convenient to receive, store, and send digital assets with little to no prior knowledge of crypto. Users need only their Google or Apple accounts to set up and log into their wallets, saving them from having to remember complex 12-word seed phrases. They also won’t need any identification cards or official documents to sign up. Liu said this is particularly important as it can be difficult obtaining official identification cards in the Philippines.

It also features an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it quicker for users to do what they need to do with their assets. They can, for example, reload their wallets through their Mastercard or Visa cards, or through services like GCash or Maya. They can also send stablecoins to other wallets, without having to move assets across different exchanges. The startup has partnered with a licensed local vendor to convert crypto into fiat, which can then be transferred to the user’s GCash wallet.

UniPass provides users three free transactions each day, with succeeding transactions costing as low as $0.01. And because the app runs on blockchain, specifically Polygon, users won’t be charged any extra fees from intermediaries.

Liu said the low transaction fees is one of the biggest advantages of using UniPass over other money transfer and remittance services. He further said the fees on UniPass Wallet, which account for network and foreign exchange fees, amount to only about 1%, whereas PayPal’s, for example, can reach 8-10%.

Transfers on UniPass are also fully settled within minutes, if not seconds. Some transfer and remittance services, in comparison, have holding periods, preventing users from accessing their money immediately.

Liu said the low fees and the speed of transactions helps users maximize their earnings and cash out as soon as they need to spend on their priorities. While adoption for digital payments solutions grew in the Philippines during the pandemic, challenges to widespread digital financial inclusion continue to persist, he noted. UniPass looked to solve those challenges by putting itself as a cheaper and faster alternative to existing offline and online remittance services.

“Our goal is to help improve the lives of many hardworking Filipinos, especially in managing their finances and global remittances, through the best ways we can,” said Liu.

UniPass is targeting freelancers in the Philippines first as they’re the ones who get paid through money transfer and remittance services, while also being digitally savvy enough to engage with cryptocurrency.

The startup hopes to onboard about 20,000 users in the country in its first six months. After which, it’ll continue to expand its target users, with Liu saying the ultimate goal is for the app to become an everyday payments solution that can be used to, for instance, buy a cup of coffee. – Rappler.com

The 2,100 financial firms on Zelle, a peer-to-peer network owned by seven banks including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, began reversing transfers as of June 30 for customers duped into sending money to scammers claiming to be from a government agency, bank or existing service provider, said Early Warning Services (EWS), the banks’ company that owns Zelle.

That’s “well above existing legal and regulatory requirements,” Ben Chance, chief fraud risk officer at EWS, told Reuters.

Federal rules require banks to reimburse customers for payments made without their authorization, such as by hackers, but not when customers themselves make the transfer.

While Zelle disclosed August 30 that it had introduced a new reimbursement benefit for “specific scam types,” it has not previously provided details on its new imposter scam refund policy due to worries doing so might encourage criminals to make false scam claims, a spokesperson said.

The new policy marks a major shift from last year when bankers, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, told lawmakers worried about rising scams that it was unreasonable to require banks to refund transfers that customers were tricked into approving.

Following its launch in 2017, Zelle grew to become one of the largest US peer-to-peer payments networks by total payments. A March 2022 New York Times report that scams were flourishing on Zelle caught the attention of lawmakers frequently critical of big banks, including Senator Elizabeth Warren.

She and other lawmakers started an investigation, estimating that Zelle users had lost $440 million to all types of fraud in 2021 alone. During a Senate hearing last year, Warren told Dimon and other bank CEOs that they had created a “perfect weapon” for criminals but had not stood by their customers. More than 100 million people, all with US bank accounts, have access to Zelle, according to EWS.

Impersonator fraud was the most-reported scam in 2022 across all payment methods in the US, accounting for $2.6 billion in losses, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Banks worry that covering the cost of authorized transactions will encourage more fraud and put them on the hook for potentially billions of dollars. Instead of requiring lenders to reimburse customers, EWS has implemented a mechanism that allows banks to claw back funds from the recipient’s account and return them to the sender, said Chance.

Lenders on Zelle are also now required to implement a tool that flags transfers with risky attributes, such as a payment to an account that has never transacted on the Zelle network, said Chance. He said Zelle has seen “a step-change reduction” in fraud and scam rates this year but declined to provide details.

“We have had a strong set of controls since the launch of the network, and as part of our journey we have continued to evolve those controls… to keep pace with what we see is going on in the marketplace,” he said.

Chance said EWS has been engaging with policymakers on the need for a “holistic approach” to combating scams, including advocating for more dedicated law enforcement resources.

Under pressure from Warren and other lawmakers, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) considered compelling lenders to reimburse scams, but Zelle’s changes have so far satisfied the agency, said a person familiar with the matter.

A CFPB spokesperson declined to comment on Zelle or potential rule changes, but said the agency is working to protect customers “including by ensuring that financial institutions are living up to their investigation and error-resolution obligations.”

JPMorgan, Bank of America and Zelle’s five other owner banks declined to comment.

“Zelle’s platform changes are long overdue,” said Warren in a statement to Reuters. “The CFPB is standing with consumers, and I urge the agency to keep the pressure on Zelle to protect consumers from bad actors.”

Market pressure

Zelle has long argued its fraud and scam rates are low.

It processed $629 billion worth of payments in 2022, according to the network, with 99.9% of transfers made without a fraud or scam report.

It competes with other peer-to-peer payment platforms like PayPal and Venmo that review situations case-by-case and have a purchase-protection program for eligible transactions that covers scams. Experts note that it is difficult to compare fraud and scam rates across platforms because classifications vary.

Zelle’s u-turn shows how banks are feeling competitive pressure to step up the “market standard of care”, said Trace Fooshee, a strategic advisor at Datos Insights.

Still, regulations mandating imposter fraud protections would be better for customers since lenders’ policies may be unclear or they may not follow them as promised, said Carla Sanchez-Adams, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

“The one thing that I think is problematic is that the consumer really wouldn’t know that they have that option, and if they do know, and if the bank fails to reimburse them, there is no private remedy,” she said, noting Zelle’s policy change was nevertheless a “good first step.”

Payment fraud is expected to come up again when bank CEOs appear before the Senate next month, according to industry experts. This time, they believe they have a good story to tell.

“The banks through Zelle – without regulation, without legislation – have actually proactively gone and said, we’re going to make sure that we are… trying to address any kind of consumer issue or harm,” said Lindsey Johnson, CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association. – Rappler.com

Those who can’t pay up receive threats, get a deluge of texts and calls, and are shamed and maligned online. Some predatory lending apps even go as far as contacting the borrowers’ friends and relatives to pressure them to pay up.

Times are hard, no thanks to inflation, but you may want to think twice before downloading that lending app.

Rappler compiled a list of online lending companies from the database and issuances of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the National Privacy Commission (NPC). The database contains the name, registration status, and red flags of each app.

If the lending app and operating company are registered with the SEC, the database will reflect its SEC registration number.

Check out the database below.

Note, however, that the SEC and NPC’s lists are primarily focused on data privacy-related concerns, unfair collection practices, and acts of harassment made in the form of threats to ruin the borrowers’ reputation and to cause physical harm to their persons and their families.

This list does not fully reflect, or only partially reflects, possible violations of the rules set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on interest rate limits.

The BSP has fixed the maximum nominal interest rate at 6% per month, or about 0.2% per day, and the effective interest rate at 15% month, or about 0.5% per day for covered loans which are unsecured, general purpose loans that do not exceed the amount of P10,000 and with a loan tenor of up to four months. (READ: Digital lending apps see growth, increased time spent by PH users in 2022 – analysis)

To file a formal complaint against a lending or financing company, click this link. – Rappler.com

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Haunted by debt, online lending app victims fight financial nightmare

The restriction appears to be limited to Android phones at the moment, and it is unclear whether the channels on Telegram apps downloaded on iOS are blocked as well. The two channels in question are the official Hamas channel, “hamas_com,” and its channel for its military wing “al-Qassam brigades.” 

The site reported that a message appears when trying to access the said channels, specifying the Google Play Store, and without mention of iOS: “Unfortunately, this channel can’t be displayed on Telegram apps downloaded from the Google Play Store.” 

A Google spokesperson, in anonymous correspondence, confirmed to The Verge that the restriction was due to a violation of its content policies related to terrorism. The site also referred to a Human Rights Watch report, which found that Hamas was using Telegram to spread videos of its attacks. 

At least one channel said to have affiliations with the group called Gaza Now, with 1.6 million followers, remains active.

The move comes as governments in both the US and the EU have begun probes on social media apps such as X and Facebook on their role in spreading disinformation or propaganda in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. 

Prior to the ban, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on October 13 on his channel on the app, indicated an opposition towards heavy-handed content moderation. 

“However, tackling war-related coverage is seldom obvious,” Durov said. He explained Hamas had also used the app to warn civilians about an imminent missile strike. “Would shutting down their channel help save lives – or would it endanger more lives?” the CEO asked. 

When moderating, Durov said that these “complex situations” need to “take into account the differences between social platforms.” He explained that on Telegram, users only receive content that they are “specifically subscribed” to, thus it’s “unlikely” that it “can significantly amplify propaganda.” – Rappler.com

Through the feature, users can invite others, whether they have a Tinder profile or not, to view and suggest potential matches. It is still up to the user, however, to decide if they want to send a like to a profile. Other people can only make suggestions on who they believe will be a good match for the user.

“Tinder Matchmaker brings your circle of trust into your dating journey and helps you see the possibilities you might be overlooking from the perspective of those closest to you,” says Melissa Hobley, chief marketing officer at Tinder.

The feature can be accessed via the instructions below, posted by the company:

• A Tinder Matchmaker session can be started directly from a profile card, or within app settings. Users can share their unique link with up to 15 friends in a 24 hour period.
• After following the link, the matchmaker can either log in to Tinder or continue as a guest (after completing an age verification prompt and agreeing to Tinder’s terms as outlined).
• Matchmakers have 24 hours to play cupid before the session expires, where they can recommend profiles for the Tinder user but won’t be able to chat or send messages on their behalf.
• Once the session expires, Tinder users will have the opportunity to review the profiles their matchmakers’ Like for them. Profiles that received a Like from a matchmaker will be marked as a “recommendation” (profiles sent a Nope won’t change).
• The Tinder user still makes the final call on who to Like – but now knows who their friends are rooting for.

The feature is currently available in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Vietnam. It is not yet in the Philippines but the company expects a global rollout. – Rappler.com

Just by simply accepting a voice call from a contact with know-how of the exploit, a user’s IP address – a unique string of numbers serving as identifier, assigned to devices connected to the internet – can be stolen.

The tech site confirmed the findings of security researcher Denis Simonov, who was able to obtain the IP address of a test device used by TechCrunch to simulate the exploit. 

A leaked IP address holds some danger. As cybersecurity firm Kaspersky points out, “A sophisticated hacker or cyber criminal may be able to discover your approximate location or even your actual physical address using your IP address.” 

“Typically, this information isn’t available to just anyone – in fact, you normally need a court order to receive it. But someone utilizing advanced IP lookup tools may be able to obtain a physical address illegally.” 

Other online activities such as internet searches may also be seen by unwanted parties. VPN provider NordVPN also warns that a stolen IP address could open up a user to DDoS attacks, being framed for illegal online activities, and phishing incidents. 

Since the exploit requires that the hacker must be added to one’s Telegram contact list, users should be extremely careful on who they add on the popular messaging app. 

TechCrunch explains that this isn’t the first time that such an exploit on Telegram has been found. 

In Telegram’s explanation, however, that the exploit is rooted in one of the methods by which the app enables calls. By default, the app uses a peer-to-peer connection “for better quality and reduced latency,” Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn told TechCrunch.

As the site shows, this option can be turned off by going to settings, ang going to Privacy and Security, and then Calls, and then selecting “Never” in the Peer-to-Peer menu. 

Telegram shows a message, explaining the settings: “Disabling peer-to-peer will relay all calls through Telegram servers to avoid revealing your IP address but may decrease audio and video quality.” 

For trusted contacts, there’s also a setting that allows users to add exceptions, letting them use peer-to-peer for better quality. – Rappler.com