“The Senate on Thursday unanimously passed legislation to ban the use of the social media app TikTok on federal devices, weeks after the House approved a similar measure,” reports The Hill: Read the rest

Facebook is banning the pro-Trump Republican PAC “The Committee to Defend the President” from advertising, after the PAC repeatedly posted content identified as false by third-party fact-checkers.

“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time on our platform,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone Thursday. Read the rest

Twitter will label the accounts of state-controlled media entities, as well as their senior staff and government officials, said the company in a blog post Thursday. Read the rest

California AG office reviewing DoJ filing, “[We] look forward to defending California’s state net neutrality protections.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today announced a five-part “Clean Network” effort from the Trump administration which Pompeo says is to limit potential national security risks from China. Read the rest

• Search warrant executed by FBI at Calabasas home of YouTube star Jake Paul on Wednesday • Judge has sealed the search-warrant affidavit • No info on nature of FBI investigation, or individual served

The Southern California home of YouTube star Jake Paul was raided today in a large FBI operation that included a SWAT team. Many details in the case remain sealed. Read the rest

Graham Clark, the 17-year-old Florida boy accused of pulling off the big Twitter hack, pled not guilty to charges on Tuesday. During the security breach, top accounts including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk were taken over to push a bitcoin scam. Read the rest

Multiple news outlets citing multiple sources report TikTok rumor, but Apple denies

Twitter disclosed in a regulatory filing it faces up to $250 million FTC fine over use of your phone # & email data to target advertisements

“Texas is investigating Facebook for possibly running afoul of state laws on the collection of biometric data, according to June documents uncovered by a tech watchdog group,” reports Ashley Gold at Axios. Read the rest

This is quite a major hack.

Now is a good time to change your Twitter password, if you are a user.

Hackers pumping a cryptocurrency giveaway scam appear to have compromised the Twitter accounts of leading exchanges, prominent individuals, major corporations, and at least one news organization. Read the rest

The mobile phones of a number of politicians in Spain, including the president of Catalonia's parliament, were recently hacked. The government of Spain has been an NSO customer since 2015, reports Motherboard on Tuesday.

NSO Group is an Israeli company that sells surveillance and hacking tools to governments around the world. Read the rest

Twitch just un-banned Donald Trump. The impeached U.S. president's official Twitch channel [Link] had been suspended for two weeks for violating the streaming video platform's rules against hateful conduct. Read the rest

Unsealed court documents reveal the identity of Fxmsp, a hacker from Kazakhstan who is blamed for information theft from more than 300 companies and governments, in 44 different countries around the world. Read the rest

The FTC and the Justice Department are investigating claims that TikTok, the popular social media app with close ties to China, violated a 2019 agreement to protect children's privacy. Read the rest

New data privacy law took effect in January, with a six-month grace period

“We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube.”