Beverly Hills High School has deployed an AI-powered surveillance apparatus that includes facial recognition cameras, behavioral analysis software, smoke detector-shaped bathroom listening devices from Motorola, drones, and license plate readers from Flock Safety -- a setup the district spent $4.8 million on in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and considers necessary given the school's high-profile location in Los Angeles.

Similar systems are spreading to campuses nationwide as schools try to stop mass shootings that killed 49 people on school property this year, 59 in 2024, and 45 in 2023. A 2023 ACLU report found that eight of the ten largest school shootings since Columbine occurred at schools that already had surveillance systems, and 32% of students surveyed said they felt like they were always being watched. The technology has a spotty track record, however.

Gun detection vendor Evolv, used by more than 800 schools including Beverly Hills High, was reprimanded by the FTC in 2024 for claiming its AI could detect all weapons after it failed to flag a seven-inch knife used to stab a student in 2022. Evolv has also flagged laptops and water bottles as guns. Rival vendor Omnilert flagged a 16-year-old student at a Maryland high school reaching for an empty Doritos bag as a possible gun threat; police held the teenager at gunpoint.

Not every school is buying in. Highline Schools in Washington state cancelled its $33,000 annual ZeroEyes contract this year and spent the money on defibrillators and Ford SUVs for its safety team instead.

A group of activists has scraped Spotify's entire library, accessing 256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files totaling roughly 300TB of data. The metadata has been released via Anna's Archive, a search engine for "shadow libraries" that previously focused on books.

Spotify described the activists as "anti-copyright extremists who've previously pirated content from YouTube and other platforms" and confirmed it is actively investigating the incident. The activists claim this represents "the world's first 'preservation archive' for music which is fully open" and covers "around 99.6% of listens."

They appear to have used Spotify's public web API to scrape the metadata and circumvented DRM to access audio files. Spotify insists that this is not a security breach affecting user data. Though the more pressing concern for the music industry may be AI training rather than pirate streaming services -- similar YouTube datasets have reportedly been used by unlicensed generative AI music services.

They call it "the business-impersonator scam". And it's fooled 396,227 Americans in just the first nine months of 2025 — 18% more than the 335,785 in the same nine months of 2024. That's according to a Bloomberg reporter (who also fell for it in late November), citing the official statistics from America's Federal Trade Commission: Some pose as airline staff on social media and respond to consumer complaints. Others use texts or e-mails claiming to be an airline reporting a delayed or cancelled flight to phish for travellers' data. But the objective is always the same: to hit a stressed out, overwhelmed traveller at their most vulnerable. In my case, the scammer exploited weaknesses in Google's automated ad-screening system, so that fraudulent sponsored results rose to the top [They'd typed "United airlines agent on demand" into Google, and the top search result on their phone said United.com, had a 1-888 number next to it and said it had had 1M+ visits in past month. "It looked legit. I tapped the number..." ]

After I reported the fake "United Airlines" ad to Google, via an online form for consumers, it was taken down. But a few days later, I entered the same search terms and the identical ad featuring the same 1-888 number was back at the top of my results. I reported it again, and it was quickly removed again... A [Google] spokesperson there said the company is constantly evolving its tactics "to stay ahead of bad actors." Of the 5.1 billion ads blocked by the company last year, she said, 415 million were taken down for "scam-related violations." Google updated its ads misrepresentation policy in 2024 to include "impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with a public figure, brand or organization to entice users to provide money or information." Still, many impostor ads slip through the cracks.
"Reported losses from business-impostor scams in the United States rose 30 per cent, to US$835 million, in the first three quarters of 2025," the article points out (citing more figures from the America's Federal Trade Commision). An updated version of the article also includes a response from United Airlines. "We encourage customers to only use customer-service contact information that is listed on our website and app."

And what happened to the scammed reporter? "I called American Express and contested the charge before cancelling my credit card. I then contacted Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, to put a fraud alert on my file. Next, I filed a complaint with the FTC and reported the fake ad to Google.

"American Express wound up resolving the dispute in my favour, but the memories of this chaotic Thanksgiving will stay with us forever. "

Tuesday the White House faces a deadline to decide "whether Chinese drone maker DJI Technologies poses a national security threat," reports Bloomberg. But their article notes it's "a decision with the potential to ground thousands of machines deployed by police and fire departments across the US."

One person making the case against the drones is Mike Nathe, a North Dakota Republican state representative described by the Post as "at the forefront of a nationwide campaign sounding alarms about the Made-in-China aircraft." Nathe tells them that "People do not realize the security issue with these drones, the amount of information that's being funneled back to China on a daily basis." The president already signed anexecutive orderin June targeting "foreign control or exploitation" of America's drone supply chain. That came after Congress mandated a review to determine whether DJI deserves inclusion in a federal register of companies believed to endanger national security. If DJI doesn't get a clean bill of health for Christmas, it could join Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp.on that Federal Communications Commission list. The designation would give the Trump administration authority to prevent new domestic sales or even impose a flight ban, affecting public agencies from New York to North Dakota to Nevada...

The fleet used by public safety agencies nationwide exceeds about 25,000 aircraft, said Chris Fink, founder of Unmanned Vehicle Technologies LLC, a Fayetteville, Arkansas-based firm that advises law-enforcement clients. The overwhelming majority of those drones — called uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in industry parlance — comes from China, said Jon Beal, president of theLaw Enforcement Drone Association, a training and advocacy group that counts DJI and some US competitors as corporate sponsors...

Currently, at least half a dozen states havetargeted DJIand other Chinese-manufactured drones, including restrictions in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. A Nevada law prohibiting public agencies from using Chinese drones took effect in January... Legislators also took up the cause in Connecticut, which passed a law this year preventing public offices from using Chinese drones. Supporters said they're worried about these eyes in the skies being used for spying. "We're kind of sitting ducks," said Bob Duff, the Democratic majority leader in the state senate who promoted the legislation. "They are designed to infiltrate systems even when the users don't think that they will."
One North Dakota sheriff's department complains U.S.-made drones are "at least double and triple the price out of the gate," according to the article, which adds that public safety officials "say it's difficult to find domestic alternatives that match DJI in price and performance."

And DJI "wants an extension on the security review," according to the article, "saying Tuesday is too soon to make a conclusion."

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a new initiative dubbed the "U.S. Tech Force," comprising about 1,000 engineers and other specialists who will work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects throughout the federal government.

Participants will commit to a two-year employment program working with teams that report directly to agency leaders in "collaboration with leading technology companies," according to an official government website. ["...and work closely with senior managers from companies partnering with the Tech Force."] Those "private sector partners" include Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google Public Sector, Dell Technologies, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce and numerous others [including AMD, IBM, Coinbase, Robinhood, Uber, xAI, and Zoom], the website says.

The Tech Force shows the Trump administration increasing its focus on developing America's AI infrastructure as it competes with China for dominance in the rapidly growing industry... The engineering corps will be working on "high-impact technology initiatives including AI implementation, application development, data modernization, and digital service delivery across federal agencies," the site says.
"Answer the call," says the new web site at TechForce.gov.

"Upon completing the program, engineers can seek employment with the partnering private-sector companies for potential full-time roles — demonstrating the value of combining civil service with technical expertise." [And those private sector companies can also nominate employees to participate.] "Annual salaries are expected to be in the approximate range of $150,000 to $200,000."

During a search for the Brown shoogin suspect, a law enforcement press conference included a request for "Ring camera footage from residents and businesses near Brown University," according to local news reports.

But in the end it was Flock cameras according to an article in Gizmodo, after a Reddit poster described seeing "odd" behavior of someone who turned out to be the suspect: The original Reddit poster, identified only as John in the affidavit, contacted police the next day and came in for an interview. He told them about his odd encounter with the suspect, noting that he was acting suspiciously by not having appropriate cold-weather clothes on when he saw him in a bathroom at Brown University. That was two hours before the shooting. After spotting him in the bathroom wearing a mask, John actually started following the suspect in what he called a "game of cat and mouse...." Police detectives showed John two images obtained through Flock, the company that's built extensive surveillance infrastructure across the U.S. used by investigators, and he recognized the suspect's vehicle, replying, "Holy shit. That might be it," according to the affidavit. Police were able to track down the license plate of the rental car, which gave them a name, and within 24 hours, they had found Claudio Manuel Neves Valente dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he reportedly rented a unit.
"We intend to continue using technology to make sure our law enforcement are empowered to do their jobs," Flock's safety CEO Garrett Langley wrote on X.com, pinning the post to the top of his feed.

Though ironically, hours before Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez credited Flock for helping to find the suspect, CNN was interviewing Flock's safety CEO to discuss "his response to recent privacy concerns surrounding Flock's technology." To Langley, the situation underscored the value and importance of Flock's technology, despite mounting privacy concerns that have prompted some jurisdictions to cancel contracts with the company... Langley told me on Thursday that he was motivated to start Flock to keep Americans safer. His goal is to deter crime by convincing would-be criminals they'll be caught... One of Flock's cameras had recently spotted [the suspect's] car, helping police pinpoint Valente's location. Flock turned on additional AI capabilities that were not part of Providence Police's contract with the company to assist in the hunt, a company spokesperson told CNN, including a feature that can identify the same vehicle based on its description even if its license plates have been changed.

The company has faced criticism from some privacy advocates and community groups who worry that its networks of cameras are collecting too much personal information from private citizens and could be misused. Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have urged communities not to work with Flock. "State legislatures and local governments around the nation need to enact strong, meaningful protections of our privacy and way of life against this kind of AI surveillance machinery," ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley wrote in an August blog post. Flock also drew scrutiny in October when it announced a partnership with Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system... ["Local officers using Flock Safety's technology can now post a request directly in the Ring Neighbors app asking for help," explains Flock's blog post.]

Langley told me it was up to police to reassure communities that the cameras would be used responsibly... "If you don't trust law enforcement to do their job, that's actually what you're concerned about, and I'm not going to help people get over that." Langley added that Flock has built some guardrails into its technology, including audit trails that show when data was accessed. He pointed to a case in Georgia where that audit found a police chief using data from LPR cameras to stalk and harass people. The chief resigned and was arrested and charged in November...

More recently, the company rolled out a "drone as first responder" service — where law enforcement officers can dispatch a drone equipped with a camera, whose footage is similarly searchable via AI, to evaluate the scene of an emergency call before human officers arrive. Flock's drone systems completed 10,000 flights in the third quarter of 2025 alone, according to the company... I asked what he'd tell communities already worried about surveillance from LPRs who might be wary of camera-equipped drones also flying overhead. He said cities can set their own limitations on drone usage, such as only using drones to respond to 911 calls or positioning the drones' cameras on the horizon while flying until they reach the scene. He added that the drones fly at an elevation of 400 feet.

"Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms," the Washington Post reported in August, noting its intial funding over $100 million from "some of Silicon Valley's most powerful investors and executives" including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, his wife, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. The group's goal was "to quash a philosophical debate that has divided the tech industry on the risk of artificial intelligence overpowering humanity," according to the article — and to support "pro-AI" candidates in America's next election in November of 2026 and "oppose candidates perceived as slowing down AI development."

Their first target? State assemblyman Alex Bores, now running to be a U.S. representative. While in the state legislature Bores sponsored a bill that would "require large AI companies to publish safety data on their technology," notes the Washington Post. So the attack ad charges that Bores "wants Albany bureaucrats regulating AI," excoriating him for sponsoring a bill that "hands AI to state regulators and creates a chaotic patchwork of state rules that would crush innovation, cost New York jobs, and fail to keep people safe! And he's backed by groups funded by convicted felon Sam Bankman-Fried. Is that really who should be shaping AI safety for our kids? America needs one smart national policy that sets clear stands for safe AI not Albany politicians like Alex Bores."

The Post calls it "the opening skirmish in a battle set to play out across the country" as tech moguls (and an independent effort receiving "tens of millions" from Meta) "try to use the 2026 midterms to reengineer Congress and state legislatures in favor of their ambitions for artificial intelligence" and "to wrest control of the narrative around AI, just as politicians in both parties have started warning that the industry is moving too fast." By knocking down candidates such as Bores, who favor regulations, and boosting industry sympathizers, the tech-backed groups could signal to incumbents and candidates nationwide that opposing the tech industry can jeopardize their electoral chances. "Bores just happened to be first, but he's not the last, and he's certainly not the only," said Josh Vlasto, co-head of Leading the Future, the bipartisan super PAC behind the ad.

The group plans to support and oppose candidates in congressional and state elections next year. It will also fund rapid response operations against voices in the industry pushing for more oversight... The strategy aims to replicate the success of the cryptocurrency industry, which used a super PAC to clear a path for Congress this summer to boost the sector's fortunes with the passage of the Genius Act... But signs that voters are increasingly wary of AI suggest that approach may be challenging to replicate. More than half of Americans believe AI poses a high risk to society, Pew Research Center found in a June survey. As AI usage continues to grow, more people are being warned by chief executives that AI will disrupt their jobs, seeing power-hungry data centers spring up in their towns or hearing claims that chatbots can harm mental health.
The article also notes there's at least two other groups seeking to counter this pro-AI push, raising money through a nonprofit called "Public First."

CNN calls the new pro-AI ads "a likely preview of the vast amounts of money the technology industry could spend ahead of next year's elections," noting that the ads are first targeting the candidate-choosing primary elections

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Search Engine Land: Google said today that it is suing SerpApi, accusing the company of bypassing security protections to scrape, harvest, and resell copyrighted content from Google Search results. The allegations: Google said SerpApi:

-Circumvented Google's security measures and industry-standard crawling controls.
-Ignored website directives that specify whether content can be accessed.
-Used cloaking, rotating bot identities, and large bot networks to scrape content at scale.
-Took licensed content from Search features, including images and real-time data, and resold it for profit.

What Google is saying. "Stealthy scrapers like SerpApi override [crawling] directives and give sites no choice at all," Google wrote, calling the alleged scraping "brazen" and "unlawful." Google said SerpApi's activity "increased dramatically over the past year." [...] If Google wins, reliable SERP data could become harder to get, more expensive, or both -- especially for teams that rely on tools powered by services like SerpApi. As AI already reduces clicks and transparency, Google now appears intent on making it even harder for brands to understand how Search works, how they appear in results, and how to measure success.

The White House says it's investigating how a personal-finance YouTuber's livestream briefly appeared on the White House's official live video page. The creator says he has no idea how his video ended up there. The Associated Press reports: The livestream appeared for at least eight minutes late Thursday on whitehouse.gov/live, where the White House usually streams live video of the president speaking. It's unclear if the website was breached or the video was linked accidentally by someone in the government. The White House said in a statement that it was "aware and looking into what happened." The video that appeared on the government-run website featured some of a more than two-hour livestream from Matt Farley, who posts as @RealMattMoney, as he answered financial questions.

Farley told The Associated Press on Friday that he had no idea what happened and learned about it after the fact. He said he had not been contacted by the government and didn't have any theories about how his livestream ended up on the website. He joked that he hoped President Donald Trump and his youngest son, Barron Trump, "are watching my streams and taking advice."

"Had I known it would have been on the White House website, I probably would have had other things to talk about than personal finance," Farley said. When asked what other things he would discuss, Farley responded with a laugh and said: "What would you talk about with the world for eight minutes if you had an opportunity? I'm just some guy making YouTube videos about stocks."

A California judge signaled support for forcing Vizio to provide the full source code for its SmartCast TV software after finding a contractual obligation under the GPL. If upheld, the case could strengthen users' rights to modify GPL-licensed software embedded in consumer electronics. The Register reports: The legal complaint from the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) seeks access to the SmartCast source code so that Vizio customers can make changes and improvements to the platform, something that ought to be possible for code distributed under the GPL. On Thursday, California Superior Court Judge Sandy Leal issued a tentative ruling in advance of a hearing, indicating support for part of SFC's legal challenge. The tentative ruling is not a final decision, but it signals the judge's inclination to grant the SFC's motion for summary adjudication, at least in part.

"The tentative ruling [PDF] grants SFC's motion on the issue that a direct contract was made between SFC and Vizio when SFC's systems administrator, Paul Visscher, requested the source code to a TV that SFC has purchased," the SFC said in a blog post. "This contract obligated Vizio to provide SFC the complete and corresponding source code." [...]

Karen Sandler, executive director of the SFC, told The Register in an email that the hearing went well, though Vizio's legal counsel "stridently disagreed" with the legal analysis in the tentative ruling. "Judge Leal said she would take the matter 'under submission' which means she will think about it further," Sandler said. "After the Court went off the record, Leal's clerk specifically verified the Court reporter could provide an expedited transcript, so Leal will likely review the hearing transcript soon." Sandler expects Leal will examine the filings again before issuing her opinion, which is likely to be issued in the next few weeks.

Hackers breached approximately 120,000 IP cameras across South Korea and allegedly sold footage captured from private homes, gynecology offices, breastfeeding rooms and massage parlors to an overseas pornography website, prompting an interagency government task force to announce sweeping reforms on December 7.

Police believe one suspect alone hacked 63,000 cameras and produced 545 videos that netted him 35 million won ($24,000) in cryptocurrency; a second suspect, operating independently, compromised 70,000 devices and earned 18 million won from 648 videos. The footage accounted for 62% of all content on the website, which maintains a dedicated "Korean" category. A government survey found that only 59% of installation companies consistently carried out mandatory security measures such as changing default passwords. Lawmakers are now pursuing legislation requiring security-certified IP cameras in sensitive facilities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the "shocking" shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials. Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in the affluent Boston suburb of Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders brought Loureiro to a hospital, and the award-winning scientist was pronounced dead there Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney's office said in a statement.

The Boston Globe reported speaking with a neighbor of Loureiro who heard gunshots, found the academic lying on his back in the foyer of their building and then called for help alongside the victim's wife. The statement from the Norfolk district attorney's office said an investigation into Loureiro's slaying remained ongoing later Tuesday. But the agency did not immediately release any details about a possible suspect or motive in the killing, which gained widespread attention across academic circles, the US and in Loureiro's native Portugal.

Portugal's minster of foreign affairs announced Loureiro's death in a public hearing Tuesday, as CNN reported. Separately, MIT president Sally Kornbluth issued a university-wide letter expressing "great sadness" over the death of Loureiro, whose survivors include his wife. "This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places," said Kornbluth's letter, released after a weekend marred by deadly mass shootings at Brown University in Rhode Island -- about 50 miles away from MIT -- as well as on Australia's Bondi Beach. The letter concluded by providing a list of mental health resources, saying: "It's entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support."

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Politico: The Senate on Wednesday approved Jared Isaacman for the top job at NASA -- an unprecedented comeback after President Donald Trump yanked his nomination this spring. Senators confirmed the billionaire private astronaut in a 67-30 vote. Trump renominated Isaacman for NASA administrator in November, after pulling his original nomination in May. He cited Isaacman's relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with whom Trump had just had a falling out, as the rationale for his decision. Isaacman's surprise rebound followed months of political jockeying and help from high-profile figures in Trump's orbit. [...] Isaacman garnered backing from lawmakers during his hearing by confirming his support for NASA's Artemis moon-landing mission, a key prerogative for Capitol Hill. He also committed to instilling urgency at the space agency, citing China's space ambitions.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in his Wednesday Senate testimony that the agency he governs "is not an independent agency, formally speaking." Axios: During his testimony, the word "independent" was removed from the FCC's mission statement on its website. The extraordinary statement speaks to a broader trend of regulatory agencies losing power to the executive branch during the Trump era. Last week, the Supreme Court appeared poised to allow President Trump to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission during oral arguments over the issue.

Sen. Ben Ray LujÃn (D-N.M.) began the line of questioning, citing the FCC's website, which said the agency was independent as of Wednesday morning. By Wednesday afternoon, the FCC's mission statement no longer said it was independent. Chairman Carr would not respond directly to questions about whether he believed the president was his boss. He would not answer whether it's appropriate if the president were to pressure him to go after media companies. He suggested the president has the power to fire him and other FCC commissioners.

Google is suing a Chinese-speaking cybercriminal group it says is responsible for a massive wave of scam text messages sent to Americans this year, according to a legal complaint filed Tuesday. From a report: The group, known as Darcula, sells software that allows users to send phishing text messages en masse, impersonating organizations like the IRS or the U.S. Postal Service in scams. The lawsuit is designed to give Google legal standing so U.S. courts will allow it to seize websites the group uses, hampering their operations, a spokesperson said.

Darcula is possibly the most prominent name in an emerging, loosely affiliated cybercrime world that creates and sells hacking programs for aspiring scammers to use. Darcula's signature program, called Magic Cat, provides an easy-to-use, intuitive way for cybercriminals without advanced hacking skills to quickly spam millions of phone numbers with links to fake websites impersonating businesses like YouTube's premium service, then steal the credit card numbers victims put in.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: The alleged perpetrator had improper access to virtually every South Korean adult's personal information: names, phone numbers and even the keycode to enter residential buildings. It was one of the biggest data breaches of recent years and it has sent the company it targeted -- Coupang, South Korea's equivalent of Amazon -- reeling, generating lawsuits, government investigation and calls to toughen penalties against such leaks. The leak went undetected for nearly five months, hitting Coupang's radar on Nov. 18 only after a customer flagged suspicious activity.

At first, Coupang, which was founded by a Korean-American entrepreneur, said it had experienced a data "exposure" affecting roughly 4,500 customer accounts. But within days, the e-commerce firm revised the figure: The leak exposed up to roughly 34 million user accounts in South Korea -- a sum representing more than 90% of the country's working-age population. Coupang started calling the incident a "leak" after Korean regulators took issue with the company's prior word choice. "The Whole Nation Is a Victim," read one local news headline.

An investigation has found that the alleged perpetrator had once worked in South Korea as a software developer for authentication systems at Coupang, which is known for its blockbuster U.S. initial public offering a few years ago. The suspected leaker is believed to be a Chinese national who has moved back to China and is now on the lam, South Korean officials say. They haven't named the person. Even after leaving the firm roughly a year ago, the suspect secretly held on to an internal authentication key that granted him unfettered access to the personal information of Coupang users, South Korean authorities and lawmakers say. The infiltration, using overseas servers, started on June 24. By using the login credentials, the suspect was able to appear as if he were still a Coupang employee when accessing the company's systems.

mprindle writes: The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users' data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.

The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office also highlighted "serious concerns" about the two Chinese companies being required to follow China's National Security Law, which could give the Chinese government access to U.S. consumers' data.

According to complaints filed this Monday in Texas state courts, the TV makers can allegedly use ACR technology to capture screenshots of television displays every 500 milliseconds, monitor the users' viewing activity in real time, and send this information back to the companies' servers without the users' knowledge or consent.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Audio streaming platform SoundCloud has confirmed that outages and VPN connection issues over the past few days were caused by a security breach in which threat actors stole a database containing user information. The disclosure follows widespread reports over the past four days from users who were unable to access SoundCloud when connecting via VPN, with attempts resulting in the site displaying 403 "forbidden" errors.

In a statement shared with BleepingComputer, SoundCloud said it recently detected unauthorized activity involving an ancillary service dashboard and activated its incident response procedures. SoundCloud acknowledged that a threat actor accessed some of its data but said the exposure was limited in scope. [...] BleepingComputer has learned that the breach affects 20% of SoundCloud's users, which, based on publicly reported user figures, could impact roughly 28 million accounts. The company said it is confident that all unauthorized access to SoundCloud systems has been blocked and that there is no ongoing risk to the platform. "We understand that a purported threat actor group accessed certain limited data that we hold," SoundCloud told BleepingComputer. "We have completed an investigation into the data that was impacted, and no sensitive data (such as financial or password data) has been accessed. The data involved consisted only of email addresses and information already visible on public SoundCloud profiles."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Several dozen people protested on Sunday in the Siberian city of Tomsk against Russia's ban on U.S. children's gaming platform Roblox, a rare show of public dissent as popular irritation over the ban gains some momentum. In wartime Russia, censorship is extensive: Moscow blocks or restricts social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube while distributing its own narrative through a network of social media and Russian media. Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on December 3 it had blocked Roblox because it was "rife with inappropriate content that can negatively impact the spiritual and moral development of children."

In Tomsk, 2,900 km (1,800 miles) east of Moscow, several dozen people braved the snow to hold up hand-drawn placards reading "Hands off Roblox" and "Roblox is the victim of the digital Iron Curtain" in Vladimir Vysotsky Park, according to photographs provided by an organizer of the protest. "Bans and blocks are all you are able to do," read one placard. The photographs showed about 25 people standing in a circle in the snow, holding up placards. In Russia, the ban on Roblox has triggered a debate over censorship, child safety in relation to technology and even the effectiveness of censorship in a digitalized world where children can bypass many bans in a few clicks.

"As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead," reports the Associated Press, "and severely restrict social media access for young people." The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement by three governing coalition and two opposition parties in parliament to ban access to social media for anyone under the age of 15. Such a measure would be the most sweeping step yet by a European Union nation to limit use of social media among teens and children.

The Danish government's plans could become law as soon as mid-2026. The proposed measure would give some parents the right to let their children access social media from age 13, local media reported, but the ministry has not yet fully shared the plans... [A] new "digital evidence" app, announced by the Digital Affairs Ministry last month and expected to launch next spring, will likely form the backbone of the Danish plans. The app will display an age certificate to ensure users comply with social media age limits, the ministry said.
The article also notes Malaysia "is expected to ban social media accounts for people under the age of 16 starting at the beginning of next year, and Norway is also taking steps to restrict social media access for children and teens.

"China — which manufacturers many of the world's digital devices — has set limits on online gaming time and smartphone time for kids."