Silicon UK Pulse: Your Tech News Update: Episode 2

Welcome to Silicon UK Pulse

This is your weekly round-up of the top tech news stories.

Every Friday, Silicon UK surveys the week’s tech news.

Stay up-to-date with what’s happening in your industry or sector.

I’m James Marriott with all the big technology news from the last week.

Fraud is on the increase, apparently – with much of it originating online.

TSB said it had found large increases in impersonation, investment and purchase fraud using social media platforms.

Impersonation scams on WhatsApp tripled in a single year, with false product scams doubling on Facebook Marketplace.

The bank said Instagram had become a hotbed for investment scams – making up 59% of all investment fraud cases.

Meanwhile, the smartphone caller ID service Truecaller says it will make its offerings available for WhatsApp and some other messaging apps to help tackle spam calls.

According to the firm’s boss, the feature is currently in beta and is set to roll out worldwide later in May.

Truecaller is based in Stockholm, but most of its users are in India.

US President Joe Biden has met with bosses of some of the biggest tech companies over AI concerns.

He held talks with the chief executives of Google and Microsoft and two AI companies at the White House.

His government is trying to ensure that artificial intelligence products are developed safely and securely.

Critics say they’re being developed too rapidly and could displace human jobs, facilitating fraud and spreading misinformation.

A British man has pleaded guilty in the United States to hacking social media accounts belonging to celebrities in 2020.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) says 23 year old Joseph James O’Connor – otherwise known as PlugwalkJoe – had been extradited from Spain on 26 April.

That came after Spain’s National Court had agreed in February to the extradition of O’Connor after he was accused of involvement in the hack of Twitter accounts of prominent figures, which were used to promote a cryptocurrency scam that promised to double their money.

He’s due to be sentenced in June.

Twitter’s admitted a glitch which led to supposedly private tweets being made available publicly across the platform.

These are messages sent using Circles – which means users are able to control who sees them – well, should be, anyway. People had complained for weeks that messages posted to some Circles were receiving views and likes from people outside the approved list.

Twitter has apologised.

More Twitter news this week as well – and you know that handle that you’ve always wanted, but someone already has even though they’ve never tweeted even once?

Well you might be able to get it after all.

Elon Musk says the platform is planning to purge accounts which have been inactive for years and make the usernames available.

He said the inactive accounts tweets would be ‘archived’

Twitter’s also revealed plans for some big changes including encrypted messaging and the ability to make and receive calls using the platform.

It’s been a pretty good week for Apple.

The firm has pleased Wall Street after posting better than expected second quarter earnings leading to a rise in share prices.

It’s believed to be down to better than expected iPhone sales.

However, profits and revenues did drop overall, amid the ongoing downturn for the smartphone market.

Ads by influencers on TikTok promoting vaping products have been banned by a UK watchdog.

The Advertising Standards Authority said two posts broke the rules – they’ve now been pulled.

There are tight regulations around promoting vaping products, designed to make sure they aren’t seen by young people.

China’s returned a reusable spacecraft back to Earth after 276 days in orbit, according to official state media there.

The uncrewed mission led by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp ended on schedule on Monday in the Gobi Desert..

No details were given about the highly secretive mission, and no images of the craft have been released.

And Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s been in the news for very different reasons this week.

He’s taken up jiu-jitsu – and turns out he’s pretty good at it.

He won a gold and silver medal in his first ever tournament in California.

He shared the news on Instagram where he has over 11 million followers.

That’s the latest from Silicon Pulse – for more tech news and features, head to silicon.co.uk