From January 1, 2023, a seller may no longer increase the price of a product for a short period of time, then reduce the price and then present this ‘before’ price as an offer or a significant discount.
Despite this tightening, consumers are still faced with misleading discounts, especially in the run-up to the holidays. Unfortunately, according to the regulator ACM, the new rules are not being sufficiently complied with. In addition, sellers often refer to a suggested retail price when offering offers instead of the original retail price of the product.
That is why Minister Adriaansens is calling for a new EU rule. This should no longer allow companies to mention the suggested retail prices suggested by manufacturers in discount promotions if sellers do not actually use them. The use of completely invented recommended prices is already legally prohibited.
The Netherlands also wants the EU to make it possible for a Member State to ban door sales and/or telemarketing.
affiliates of ransomware gang AlphV (aka BlackCat) claimed to have compromised digital lending firm MeridianLink – and reportedly filed an SEC complaint against the fintech firm for failing to disclose the intrusion to the US watchdog.
First reported by DataBreaches, the break-in apparently happened on November 7. AlphaV’s operatives claimed they did not encrypt any files but did steal some data – and MeridianLink was allegedly aware of the intrusion the day it occurred.
In screenshots shared with The Register and posted on social media, the AlphaV SEC submission claims MeridianLink made a “material misstatement or omission” in its filings and financial statements, “or a failure to file.”
The thoughtful folks at AlphV asserted they are simply filing the paperwork for MeridianLink – and giving it “24 hours before we publish the data in its entirety.”
The Register asked the SEC about the AlphV complaint. “We decline to comment,” the spokesperson replied.
[…] back in 2020 Epic added an option to Fortnite on mobile that let players buy Fortnite’s in-game V-Bucks currency directly from the company at a discount, bypassing both Apple’s and Google’s app store fees. This violated Apple and Google policies Epic agreed to and quickly led to both companies removing Fortnite from their respective mobile phone app stores. That triggered a lawsuit from Epic and led to a protracted 2021 legal fight against Apple over how Apple ran its app store, the monopoly it may have had, and the fees it charged app developers on in-app purchases. And now Epic is waging a similar legal battle against Google.
[…]
As reported by The Verge on November 6, the first day of the trial, Epic was allowed to tell the jury that Google may have destroyed or hidden relevant evidence. And throughout the first six-days of the trial, Epic’s lawyers have continued to bring up how few chatlogs Google provided during discovery and grilled Google execs over deleted chats and jokes about hiding conversations.
On November 7, Google Information Governance Lead Genaro Lopez was questioned multiple times about the seemingly missing chatlogs, and the company’s policy of telling employees to chat “off the record” about sensitive issues that could cause problems later down the line. Epic’s legal team also went after Google’s chat system, which includes a tool that lets its employees prevent chat history from being saved, and pointed out that Google employees were doing this even after a legal hold was put on the company following the Fortnite lawsuit. Asked if Google could have changed this policy and forced chats to be saved, Lopez agreed that it could have been altered, but wasn’t.
“You cannot guarantee that the documents that were destroyed will contradict the testimony we’re going to hear?” asked Epic’s lawyer. Lopez couldn’t make that guarantee.
On November 8, Google Play’s VP of Apps and Games Purnima Kochikar was also questioned about deleted chats and explained that the court won’t ever see her chat logs.
“During this case, you had your default setting to delete chats every 24 hours, correct?” Epic’s legal team asked.
“That was the default,” Kochikar said. She also confirmed she didn’t take any steps to change this setting.
Image: Epic Games
On November 9, some saved chat messages from Google’s head of platforms & ecosystems strategy for Android, Margaret Lam, showed her directly asking someone to turn off chat history due to “sensitivity with legal these days :)”.
Lam claimed in court that no Google attorney had briefed her on preserving chats during Epic’s legal hold. However, Epic’s lawyers weren’t done, and continued to show messages in which Lam asked people to turn off chat history. The Verge reports that one of these situations included a colleague pushing back and insisting that he was on a legal hold. In response, Lam messaged: “Ok maybe I take you off this convo :)”.
At another point, Lam messaged someone else: “also just realized our history is on 🙊 can we turn it off? Haha”.
Lam did push back, claiming that she went to legal for better advice after these conversations and now understands she failed to comply with the legal hold.
Then on November 13, James Kolotouros, VP of Android platform partnerships, admitted that he can’t remember a single instance when he might have turned on his chat history.
Google’s CEO wasn’t saving evidence, either
And today, during Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s time on the stand, Epic was able to get him to confirm that he also wasn’t saving his chats, letting messages auto-delete after 24 hours. Epic also showed evidence of Pichai asking for chat history to be turned off and then trying to delete that message, though the Google CEO claimed that was a glitch.
Not only that, Pichai confirmed that he has in the past marked documents with attorney/client privilege even when he was not seeking legal advice just so those emails didn’t get forwarded. Pichai told Epic’s lawyers that nobody told him that was wrong, though he now admits that he shouldn’t have done that.
Epic’s goal for all of this has been to show that Google might have been deleting chats or hiding evidence. That would help it make the case to the jury that the Android platform creator is trying to avoid creating a legal paper trail which could imply the company has something to hide from the court. That in turn makes Google seem less trustworthy and helps color all of its actions in a different light, something that could ultimately swing a jury one way or the other.
Regardless of if the jury cares about what has happened, the judge in the case very much seems to. Judge James Donato appears so fed up with the situation that on November 13, he demanded that Google’s chief legal officer show up in court by November 16 to explain what’s going on. If he doesn’t show or can’t give a good enough reason for why so much evidence was seemingly destroyed, the judge is considering instructing the jury to not trust Google as much as they might have before.
Needless to say, such a turn would not be good for Google’s fortunes in its continuing proceedings with Epic.
We made an error with the 2023.42 OTA update – a fat finger where the wrong build with the wrong security certificates was sent out. We cancelled the campaign and we will restart it with the proper software that went through the different campaigns of beta testing.
Service will be contacting impacted customers and will go through the resolution options. That may require physical repair in some cases.
This is on us – we messed up. Thanks for your support and your patience as we go through this.
* Update 1 (11/13, 10:45 PM PT): The issue impacts the infotainment system. In most cases, the rest of the vehicle systems are still operational. A vehicle reset or sleep cycle will not solve the issue. We are validating the best options to address the issue for the impacted vehicles. Our customer support team is prioritizing support for our customers related to this issue. Thank you.
*Update 2 (11/14, 11:30 AM PT): Hi all, As I mentioned yesterday, we identified an issue in our recent software update 2023.42.0 that impacted the infotainment system on a number of R1T and R1S vehicles. In most cases, the rest of the vehicle systems and the mobile app will remain functional. If you’re an impacted owner, you should have received an email and a text communication. We understand that this is frustrating and we are really sorry for this inconvenience. The team continues to actively work on the best possible solution to fix the impacted vehicles, and we will keep the community updated. In the meantime, our Service team is prioritizing this issue and you can reach out to them at 1-855-748-4265.
*Update 3 (11/14, 7 PM PT): We just emailed the impacted owners with next steps. The team managed to build a solution, and we will start rolling it out tomorrow.
*Update 4 (11/15 11:30 AM PT): the team has been able to build a solution that fixes the issue remotely. Roll out starting today. Thanks to the community for the support.
As far as I am concerned well done – everyone was kept informed and a tough problem to fix was rolled out fairly quickly. Mistakes happen everywhere, so it’s more important that they are fixed and that people are informed.
It does, however, highlight the security issues of automatic updates.
The Clorox Company’s chief security officer has left her job in the wake of a corporate network breach that cost the manufacturer hundreds of millions of dollars.
[…]
Chau Banks, the chief information and data officer of the $7 billion biz, who reportedly penned the memo, will fill Bogac’s role as Clorox continues mopping up the mess searches for and hires a replacement.
[…]
Clorox first disclosed its computer network had been compromised in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing in August. At the time, it said some of its IT systems and operations had been “temporarily impaired” due to “unauthorized activity” in its IT environment.
A subsequent SEC filing in September noted “wide scale disruption” across the business because of the intrusion.
Those disruptions included processing orders by hand after some systems were taken offline.
[…]
In its first-quarter fiscal 2024 earnings report at the start of this month, Clorox reported a 20 percent drop in year-on-year Q1 net sales and noted the $356 million decrease was “driven largely” by the cyberattack.
In a subsequent SEC filing, Clorox noted that expenses related to the network break-in for the three months ending September 30 totaled $24 million.
“The costs incurred relate primarily to third-party consulting services, including IT recovery and forensic experts and other professional services incurred to investigate and remediate the attack, as well as incremental operating costs incurred from the resulting disruption to the company’s business operations,” according to the Form 10-Q filing.
Clorox also revealed it expects to incur more expenses related to the security super-snafu in future periods
