Hashtag Trending – Tech companies condemns UK surveillance proposal; Amazon removes misinformation; iPhones are trackers galore

Tech companies condemn a new UK surveillance proposal, Amazon removes fake medical books, journalist finds 5,400 trackers on his iPhone.

That’s all the news that’s trending today. It’s Friday, May 31st, and I’m your host, Tom Li.

Trending on Reddit, tech companies have riled up against a UK surveillance proposal. The proposal, made by two senior UK intelligence officials, doesn’t ask the companies to break the encryption. Instead, it wants the app to send a copy of the encrypted message to a third party while in transit. Both WhatsApp and Apple have argued against this idea, stating that they would need to make fundamental changes to their apps or encryption algorithm and mislead users about chat participants.

Trending on Reddit, In the most recent move to combat medical misinformation, Amazon removed a list of books that claimed drinking bleach could cure illnesses. These books contained instructions on brewing a bleach mixture and falsely claimed that they could cure malaria and autism. It’s crazy to even consider their effectiveness, but to completely eliminate their chance of hurting anyone, Amazon has decided to ban them permanently.

Lastly, trending on LinkedIn, Geoffery Fowler, technology columnist for the Washington Post, discovered 5,400 trackers on his iPhone that skimmed his data in a single week. The trackers spawned from apps like Yelp, Microsoft OneDrive, Mint, Spotify, and even the publication he was working for. Disconnect, the privacy firm that helped Fowler discover these trackers, said that these trackers could be sending as much as 1.5GB of data per month if left unchecked. Fowler said that his findings are in direct contrast to Apple’s marketing, which touted that iPhone users’ information would stay on their devices.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Tom Li, thanks for listening.