Under the accusation of having collected data from minor users without their parents’ permission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have filed a lawsuit against the TikTok platform.

Both organizations argue that “the popular video sharing application violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act” and stressed that it committed a widespread violation of laws that protect children’s privacy.

It is estimated that millions of children under 13 years of age have suffered from sustained data collection. Also, they have “interacted with adult users and have accessed adult content,” according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

TikTok is accused of allowing minors to create accounts and browse its social network, “frequented by 170 million people in the United States.” Data collection has been sustained since 2019; likewise, the information has been stored without parental knowledge or authorization, even in the case of accounts created in Kids Mode.

Deputy Attorney General Brian Boynton indicated that the fine is a necessary action to prevent minors under 13 from using regular TikTok. He warned that the defendants, “who are repeat offenders and operate on a large scale, must be prevented from collecting and using private data of young children without parental consent or control.”

It was learned that in June, the United States Consumer Protection Agency (FTC) presented a report to the Department of Justice in June regarding suspicions of violation of the law by TikTok and ByteDance.

TikTok spokespersons have regretted the measure, and have indicated that they are accused of past practices, which have already been corrected. They noted that they are disappointed that the Department of Justice chose the fine instead of continuing to work together to find a reasonable solution.

They recalled that they have taken measures to protect children, such as deleting accounts of those under 13 years of age and limiting viewing time.

M.Pino

Source: france24

(Reference image source: Rubaitul Azad in Unsplash)

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La entrada TikTok faces civil lawsuit in the United States for violating the privacy of minors apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The United States Department of Justice has requested this Tuesday three years in prison for the former CEO of the crypto platform Binance, Changpeng Zhao, while his lawyers have asked for conditional release.

Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to the charge of money laundering in the US. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 30. However, information about the possible sentence of three years in prison has been leaked to the media.

Late Tuesday night the Justice Department sent a sentencing memorandum, “arguing that Zhao, better known by his nickname CZ, should receive a sentence of 36 months in prison for his role in allowing the cryptocurrency exchange to violate federal sanctions and money laundering laws.”

This violation was not an accident, according to justice, since Zhao decided to take this route to attract users and obtain large profits.

By pleading guilty in November of last year, the cryptocurrency expert agreed with the Prosecutor’s Office to resign from his position on the platform “and consented to a personal fine of $50 million.”

The sentence will be issued on April 30. Zhao must remain in the United States, and his request to return to Dubai, where he resides with his family, was denied.

M.Pino

Source: diariobitcoin

(Reference image source: Unsplash+, in collaboration with Yunus Tuğ)

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La entrada United States justice requests three years in prison for former CEO of Binance apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The United States has recently conducted various judicial proceedings in the area of ​​​​cryptocurrencies. The Justice Department’s surveillance measures have become more radical following the FTX and Binance cases.

With the security of clients’ assets as its goal, the United States has radicalized the monitoring of cryptocurrency transactions. With this, they have managed to bring to light cases of fraud, non-compliance with regulations, evasion of controls, among other crimes.

The most recent scandal in this market is that of the Binance exchange, where CEO Changpeng Zhao was forced to leave office and pay a million-dollar fine to the authorities.

The radicalization of supervision, according to some analysts, could lead the platform to bankruptcy. However, this is a completely relevant control of the FED, the SEC and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

With the Binance case, the DOJ will henceforth apply stronger measures in the crypto sector, which include everything from internal procedures to anti-evasion policies to prevent fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, financing of terrorist activities, among others.

M.Pino

Source: cripto247

(Reference image source: Aditya Vyas, Unsplash)

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La entrada The United States tightens surveillance on cryptocurrencies apareció primero en Bitfinance.

In an unprecedented move, the US Department of Justice announced the successful takedown of the infrastructure of an insidious program known as Qakbot. This malicious network, which had left its mark on more than 700,000 computers around the world, has finally been eradicated.

Under the direction of the FBI, international collaboration played a key role in this large-scale operation. Authorities from France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Romania and Latvia joined forces to end the Qakbot threat.

The nefarious malware, used to steal sensitive data, along with its complex botnet, wreaked hundreds of millions of dollars worth of financial havoc globally.

The scale of this joint action represents the most forceful US-led strike against a botnet, which, until recently, had been used by cybercriminals to carry out ransomware attacks, financial fraud and other cybercrime. The Department of Justice highlighted the importance of this intervention in the fight against digital crime.

Within the framework of this operation, about 8.6 million dollars in cryptocurrencies were seized, profits illegally generated by this malicious operation.

Attorney General Merrick Garland stressed that this operation has sent a clear message to cybercriminals who rely on malware like Qakbot: they are not out of the reach of justice. He explained that the Department of Justice managed to infiltrate Qakbot’s infrastructure, sparking a global campaign to remove the malware from victim machines both in the United States and abroad.

According to documented evidence, Qakbot, also known by aliases such as “Qbot” and “Pinkslipbot”, is controlled by a cybercriminal organization that uses it to attack key industries around the world.

Qakbot’s preferred method of infection is via spam emails that carry malicious attachments or links. Once it infiltrates a system, Qakbot has the ability to download additional malware or even take complete control of the infected machine.

In recent years, Qakbot has served as an entry point for several prolific ransomware groups, including Conti, ProLock, Egregor, REvil, MegaCortex, and Black Basta. These groups have wreaked havoc by extorting business and government organizations through ransomware attacks, demanding payments in Bitcoin in exchange for restoring access to their systems.

The Justice Department’s statement concludes by noting that these ransomware groups have left a detrimental impact on businesses, healthcare providers, and government agencies around the world.

K. Tovar

Source: Bancaynegocios

(Reference image source: Michael Geiger, Unsplash)

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La entrada International Qakbot malware network dismantled that affected more than 700,000 computers apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), a company founded and directed by Elon Musk, for discriminating against asylees and refugees in the company’s hiring processes.

Thus, the lawsuit alleges that, from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, based on their citizenship status, in violation of the Act of Immigration and Nationality (INA).

In this regard, the Department of Justice maintains that, in its job advertisements and public statements, SpaceX erroneously stated that it could only hire US citizens and legal permanent residents as a result of federal regulations, when export control laws do not impose such restrictions on hiring.

“Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider and hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hiring regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” the statement said. Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Area, Kristen Clarke.

Likewise, the complaint states that recruiters and high-level personnel of SpaceX “took measures that actively discouraged” asylees and refugees from seeking job opportunities in the company.

“Through this lawsuit, we will hold SpaceX accountable for its illegal employment practices and seek help that allows asylees and refugees to compete fairly for job opportunities and contribute their talents to SpaceX’s workforce,” she added.

K.Tovar

Source: Voz de América

(Reference image source: SpaceX, Europa Press / dpa)

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La entrada US sues SpaceX for alleged discrimination apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the technology giant Google for monopoly in the advertising sector, for which it asked the Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to force the company to spin off part of its advertising business.

The lawsuit is led by the Department of Justice, although the states of Virginia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennesse have joined the legal action.

“Competition in the ad-tech space is broken, for reasons that have not been accidental or unavoidable. An industry behemoth, Google, corrupted legitimate competition in the ad-tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of a wide range of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising“, the plaintiffs said.

The prosecutors of these States ensure that Google keeps “at least” 30% of the campaigns that advertisers advertise on the websites of publishers through its advertising technology.

This is the second lawsuit that the Justice Department has filed against Google. In 2020, the agency already began legal proceedings against the technology company, alleging that it had engaged in monopolistic practices to dominate the Internet search sector, as well as advertising in said searches.

K. Tovar

Source: El Pais

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La entrada USA sued Google for monopoly apareció primero en Bitfinance.

Meta implemented the new system in the United States aimed at the company’s own ads, with the aim of making their distribution more equitable, following the agreement reached with the country’s Department of Justice.

The variance reduction system is a machine learning tool that Meta developed in conjunction with the Department of Justice so that “the actual audience that sees an ad more closely reflects the eligible target audience for that ad”, as stated in a post on its official blog.

To reduce differences between audiences, during the course of a campaign the algorithm will analyze the aggregated demographic distribution of the people who have seen the ad in the Meta services to later compare it with the target audience chosen by the advertiser.

The company stressed the privacy of this tool, which is based on improved Bayesian surname geocoding, information from the country’s census, to guarantee the privacy of people, to which “additional privacy improvements” have been added that prevent, for example, the reidentification of an individual within an aggregated data set.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: file)

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La entrada Meta launches a new advertising format apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The US authorities arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, to whom the American press already baptized as the “Bonnie & Clyde of the Crypto Era”, by an alleged conspiracy cripple to whites billions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrencies during the hacking of the Bitfinex platform in 2016, the Justice Department announced.

According to judicial documents, Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly collaborated in whitening the profits obtained with the 119,754 Bitcoins that were stolen from BitFinex and that through unauthorized transactions were sent to a digital wallet under the control of Lichtenstein.

The value of the Bitcoins stolen in 2016 would currently be $ 4.5 billion, compared to the only more than 71 million dollars when crypto assets were valued at the time of computer attack.

During the last five years, approximately 25,000 of these stolen Bitcoins were transferred from Lichtenstein’s wallet through a complicated money laundering process that ended with the deposit from the funds subtracted in accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan.

The rest of the stolen funds, which comprise more than 94,000 Bitcoins, with a current value of more than 3,600 million dollars remained in the wallet and have been seized by the FBI.

In this way, the operation represents “the largest financial seizure ever carried out by the Department of Justice,” according to the Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, who assured that it is shown that cryptocurrencies “are not a safe shelter for criminals.”

“We can track the money through ‘Blockchain’ and we will not allow cryptocurrencies to be a safe shelter for money laundering or an area of ​​anarchy within our financial system”, added Attorney General Kenneth A. Cortés.

K. Tovar.

Source: BI

La entrada Couple was detained for money laundering in Bitcoins apareció primero en Bitfinance.