Vaibhav Shukla

MEITU, A CHINESE selfie editing app, has amassed billions in downloads since launching in 2008; it’s been trendy in Asia for several years, and just recently began gaining popularity in the United States. The anime-style photo-editing tool, which is available through the Apple and Android app stores, features airbrushed, fairylike depictions of people.

Users noticed that the Android version had very invasive permissions, and developers who took a deeper look found code that pulled a whole lot of sensitive data off your phone, and sent it to Meitu’s servers in China. That included unique identifiers for your phone — its IMEI and MAC address — and precise GPS coordinates of your location, which is pulled from the EXIF data of photos you take even if you deny the app permission to your phone’s location data. It even checked iOS versions to see if they were running on jailbroken device, so it could send back more data.

 

 

https://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Blog/Meitu-the-tracking-controversy-over-the-latest-selfie-craze/bc-p/19871691

Britain’s largest mortgage lender was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Jan. 11, which carried on for two days, according to the source.

The disruption, which involved bombarding the websites with huge volumes of traffic from multiple systems so they overload a server, left some customers temporarily unable to use services such as checking their balance or sending payments. DDoS attacks have become common tools for cyber criminals trying to cripple businesses and organisations with significant online activities.

 

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/23/lloyds-cyber-attack-hit-banking-services.html