Always with his finger on the pulse, Senator Al Franken today sent an official request to Niantic asking about particulars of the Pokémon Go privacy policy. “I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent,” the letter reads. Read MoreSen. Al Franken questions Niantic over Poképrivacy policy
Always with his finger on the pulse, Senator Al Franken today sent an official request to Niantic asking about particulars of the Pokémon Go privacy policy. “I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent,” the letter reads. Read More
PostGhost was a service that stored and displayed the deleted Tweets of celebrities and politicians. Created as a way to keep public discourse honest, Twitter shut it down with a cease and desist warning citing a failure to comply with API rules. The resulting brouhaha led me to track down the anonymous founder and ask him or her a few questions about what happened. TC: Who are you? How… 
Pokémon Go isn’t reading your Gmail. The makers of the hot, new mobile game are fixing a bug that allowed the app to gain full access to users’ accounts, when they signed in using their Google account information. The company claims it didn’t mean to ask for such elevated permissions, and it will now correct this. The app had the power to access your Gmail, your Google… 
PostGhost was a nascent website that archived the tweets of the famous, rich, and important. The site got popular for finding and storing the deleted Tweets of politicians and even Lindsay Lohan who plead with the English PM to #remain. “We created the website postghost.com to provide the public with a more accurate history of public statements made by the most influential public figures… 
Facebook only removes content if it celebrates or glorifies violence, not if it’s only graphic or disturbing, according to a spokesperson. Facebook also insists that the video of Philando Castile’s death was temporarily unavailable due to a technical glitch that was Facebook’s fault. That contradicts theories that the video disappeared due to Facebook waffling on whether… 
Twitter isn’t satisfied with streaming 10 Thursday Night Football games this upcoming NFL season. According to Recode, the social media network is also reportedly in talks with the NBA, Major League Soccer and cable television giant Turner about acquiring digital rights to stream more live sports. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to our request for confirmation of the report. 
And so, the dating pool for queer women across the world got that much bigger. Her, the dating app focused exclusively on ladies who are into other ladies, has finally opened up the app to Android users. The app launched all the way back in 2013 in the UK, and back then it was known as “Dattch.” Since, the app has rebranded to Her and launched across the United States, with… 
The WaterIsLife charity discovered a Venmo loophole, enabling it to blast its message to a thousand unsuspecting people earlier this week. By sending $0.01 to folks who were appearing in the Venmo feed, it was able to advertise the charity to hundreds of people. Their shitty marketing stunt kicks open the floodgate for yet another channel of spam coming at you from all sides. Yay. 
What’s a poor beleaguered brand like Yahoo to do? Use its smart engineers to jump on the hottest trend, of course. Today the company is launching a bot that simulates a pet monkey for Facebook Messenger. Oh, and a few slightly more useful bots, too, like ones that will tell you about the weather, latest news and how your stock portfolio is performing. 
I hate networking. Or at least the type of networking that consists of awkward happy hours where no one knows each other and you’re approached every five seconds by some over-eager “networker” who seemingly has an endless pocket full of business cards.