Daily Archives: October 12, 2021

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney calls out Apple for promoting its services in the iPhone Settings screen

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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose high-profile antitrust lawsuit against Apple is now under appeal, is today calling out the iPhone maker for giving itself access to an advertising slot its competitors don’t have: the iPhone’s Settings screen. Some iOS 15 users noticed Apple is now advertising its own services at the top of their Settings, just below their Apple ID. The services being suggested are personalized to the device owner, based on which ones they already subscribe to, it appears.

For example, those without an Apple Music subscription may see an ad offering a free six-month trial. However, current Apple Music subscribers may instead see a prompt to add on a service they don’t yet have, like AppleCare coverage for their devices.

Sweeney suggests this sort of first-party advertising is an anticompetitive risk for Apple, as some of the services it’s pushing here are those that directly compete with third-party apps published on its App Store. But those third-party apps can’t gain access to the iPhone’s Settings screen, of course — they can only bid for ad slots within the App Store itself.

Writes Sweeney: “New from the guys who banned Fortnite: settings-screen ads for their own music service, which come before the actual settings, and which aren’t available to other advertisers like Spotify or Sound Cloud.”

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Source: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney calls out Apple for promoting its services in the iPhone Settings screen | TechCrunch

And in the meantime, US judges are blind and deaf to obvious monopolies in plain sight.

Facebook Banned Creator of Unfollow Everything App That Made Facebook Less Toxic

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A developer who created a browser extension designed to help Facebook users reduce their time spent on the platform says that the company responded by banning him and threatening to take legal action.

Louis Barclay says he created Unfollow Everything to help people enjoy Facebook more, not less. His extension, which no longer exists, allowed users to automatically unfollow everybody on their FB account, thus eliminating the newsfeed feature, one of the more odious, addictive parts of the company’s product. The feed, which allows for an endless barrage of targeted advertising, is powered by follows, not friends, so even without it, users can still visit the profiles they want to and navigate the site like normal.

The purpose of bucking the feed, Barclay says, was to allow users to enjoy the platform in a more balanced, targeted fashion, rather than being blindly coerced into constant engagement by Facebook’s algorithms.

How did Facebook reward Barclay for trying to make its user experience less toxic? Well, first it booted him off of all of its platforms—locking him out of his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Then, it sent him a cease and desist letter, threatening legal action if he didn’t shut the browser extension down. Ultimately, Barclay said he was forced to do so, and Unfollow Everything no longer exists. He recently wrote about his experience in an op-ed for Slate, saying:

If someone built a tool that made Facebook less addictive—a tool that allowed users to benefit from Facebook’s positive features while limiting their exposure to its negative ones—how would Facebook respond?

I know the answer, because I built the tool, and Facebook squashed it.

Source: Facebook Banned Creator of App That Made Facebook Less Toxic

England’s Data Guardian warns of plans to grant police access to patient data

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England’s National Data Guardian has warned that government plans to allow data sharing between NHS bodies and the police could “erode trust and confidence” in doctors and other healthcare providers.

Speaking to the Independent newspaper, Dr Nicola Byrne said she had raised concerns with the government over clauses in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

The bill, set to go through the House of Lords this month, could force NHS bodies such as commissioning groups to share data with police and other specified authorities to prevent and reduce serious violence in their local areas.

Dr Byrne said the proposed law could “erode trust and confidence, and deter people from sharing information, and even from presenting for clinical care.”

Meanwhile, the bill [PDF] did not detail what information it would cover, she said. “The case isn’t made as to why that is necessary. These things need to be debated openly and in public.”

In a blog published last week, Dr Byrne said the bill imposes a duty on clinical groups in the NHS to disclose information to police without breaching any obligation of patient confidentiality.

“Whilst tackling serious violence is important, it is essential that the risks and harms that this new duty pose to patient confidentiality, and thereby public trust, are engaged with and addressed,” she said.

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Source: England’s Data Guardian warns of plans to grant police access to patient data • The Register

Microsoft said it mitigated a 2.4 Tbps DDoS attack, the largest ever

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Microsoft said its Azure cloud service mitigated a 2.4 terabytes per second (Tbps) distributed denial of service attack this year, at the end of August, representing the largest DDoS attack recorded to date.

Amir Dahan, Senior Program Manager for Azure Networking, said the attack was carried out using a botnet of approximately 70,000 bots primarily located across the Asia-Pacific region, such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, and China, as well as the United States.

Dahan identified the target of the attack only as “an Azure customer in Europe.”

The Microsoft exec said the record-breaking DDoS attack came in three short waves, in the span of ten minutes, with the first at 2.4 Tbps, the second at 0.55 Tbps, and the third at 1.7 Tbps.

Dahan said Microsoft successfully mitigated the attack without Azure going down.

Prior to Microsoft’s disclosure today, the previous DDoS record was held by a 2.3 Tbps attack that Amazon’s AWS division mitigated in February 2020.

Dahan said the largest DDoS attack that hit Azure prior to the August attack was a 1 Tbps attack the company saw in Q3 2020, while this year, Azure didn’t see a DDoS attack over 625 Mbps all year.

Record for largest volumetric DDoS attack broken days later too

Just days after Microsoft mitigated this attack, a botnet called Meris broke another DDoS record — the record for the largest volumetric DDoS attack.

According to Qrator Labs, the operators of the Meris botnet launched a DDoS attack of 21.8 million requests per second (RPS) in early September. Sources told The Record last month that the attack targeted a Russian bank that was hosting its e-banking portal on Yandex Cloud servers.

Security firm Rostelecom-Solar sinkholed around a quarter of the Meris botnet later that month.

It is unclear if the Meris botnet was behind the attack detected and mitigated by Microsoft in August. An Azure spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

Source: Microsoft said it mitigated a 2.4 Tbps DDoS attack, the largest ever