Tech News
Tech News and Analysis from around the web

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Flowhaven, which helps brands manage their licensing partnerships, raises $16M Series A led by Sapphire Sport, bringing its total raised to $21.5M — The media licensing business is a massive market, but much of the work involved is still handled manually through emails and spreadsheets.


Dylan Byers / NBC News:
Facebook's Oversight Board issues first-ever rulings, which Facebook said it will abide by, overturning four out of the five cases it reviewed — Facebook's Oversight Board on Thursday issued its first round of decisions, overturning several of the company's decisions to remove posts …

Maggie Fitzgerald / CNBC:
Robinhood says due to “recent volatility” it is restricting trading in some stocks, including GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia, to “position closing only” — Amid the flurry of speculative activity in GameStop, brokers took steps to restrict the trading …

The Information:
Sources: Facebook is preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for forcing developers to abide by App Store rules that Apple's own apps don't have to follow — A long-simmering public dispute between Facebook and Apple has neared a boiling point. With the aid of outside legal counsel …

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
YouTube says its TikTok competitor Shorts is getting 3.5B views per day in its test run in India and plans to expand the feature into more markets in 2021 — - YouTube's short video feature is gaining traction in India, the company's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, said Tuesday.

Marcella McCarthy / TechCrunch:
Brazilian neobank Nubank raises $400M Series G at a $25B valuation, bringing its total raised to $1.2B — While the pandemic has left some startups strapped for cash, the aptly-named Brazilian neobank Nubank is swimming in it. This morning, the company announced that it has raised …

Ashley Gold / Axios:
Study: verified accounts on Twitter shared more content from deceptive sites than ever in 2020, interactions with deceptive content on FB also at all-time high — Verified accounts on Twitter shared more content from deceptive websites than ever in 2020, according to new research …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Facebook adds opt-in biometric fingerprint, face, or iris scan authentication for WhatsApp on desktop or web — WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned popular messaging app with more than 2 billion users, has been getting a lot of heat and losing users in recent weeks after announcing (and then delaying) changes to how it uses your data.

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee / New York Times:
An inside look at tech support scams perpetrated by scammers based in fraudulent Indian call centers, which were exposed by pseudonymous YouTuber Jim Browning — Every year, tens of millions of Americans collectively lose billions of dollars to scam callers. Where does the other end of the line lead?

Melissa Repko / CNBC:
Walmart plans to expand its use of automation to pick and pack online grocery orders, and work with several companies including Alert Innovation and Dematic — - Walmart will expand its use of automated systems to pick-and-pack shoppers' online grocery orders.

Elena Schneider / Politico:
US political campaigns say that bans by Facebook and Google on political ads have hamstrung them during a crucial fundraising window ahead of the 2022 midterms — Facebook and Google's on-again, off-again bans on political ads are hitting campaigns during a crucial fundraising window …

TechCrunch:
Apple says its App Tracking Transparency feature, which will be enabled by default, will roll out with iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14 updates in early spring — Apple has shared a few more details about its much-discussed privacy changes in iOS 14. The company first announced at WWDC …

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
US and Bulgarian authorities seize a dark web site used to publish data stolen from victims of NetWalker, which has been among the most rapacious ransomware — U.S. and Bulgarian authorities this week seized the darkweb site used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercrime group to publish data stolen from its victims.

Danny Palmer / ZDNet:
Europol, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies worldwide have seized control of malware botnet Emotet's infrastructure and disrupted it from the inside — Europol and FBI among agencies that have taken control of the botnet infrastructure used by cyber criminals behind some of the most prolific malware and ransomware attacks.

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
SAP to acquire Signavio, a Berlin-based business process automation company, reportedly for $1.2B — Rumors have been flying this week that SAP was going to buy Berlin business process automation startup Signavio, and sure enough the company made it official today.
