Today Reddit announced a security incident that occurred in the middle of June. The incident was discovered on June 19th, 2018, and the full extent of the data shared and/or compromised was revealed this afternoon. The incident is particularly important right this minute because of the rise of understanding in the weaknesses in sms-verified authentication.
Reddit is bringing back an old-school form of Internet interaction with strangers: chat rooms. The company has been quietly working on its Chat platform, including offering it as a limited beta over the past year. Over these months, Reddit says that about 7,000 people have used the chat feature, paving the way for today's big news: the chat room beta is expanding to more subreddits.
In case you missed the initial announcement, Reddit introduced an alpha test for a News tab in its iOS app about a month ago. The feature provides a dedicated in-app area where news content on a variety of categories can be accessed directly. This week, the company revealed that it is bringing that new tab to all of its iOS users, but not everyone is happy about it.
It might not be that good at making tools to protect its DRM, but Flight Sim Labs seem to be pretty good at stirring up controversy for itself. Earlier this year, the popular flight simulation developers were discovered to have “erroneously” implemented an anti-piracy mechanism that harvested some users’ Google Chrome passwords. Now its DRM strategy is again at the center of another scandal but not because of any technical or security problem but because the company is threatening legal action against Reddit moderators over a thread discussing that topic.
Overnight the internet became obsessed with an audio clip called Laurel VS Yanny. Today we're going to make the distinction simple - with pictures and everything. In a nutshell: both "yanny" and "laurel" are in the original sound clip - and it wasn't originally meant to be a trick. It's just the way the audio clip was processed that makes the big difference.
Reddit has a long history of allowing controversial subreddits to stay live, though it has implemented certain actions against them in the past, such as quarantining. Still, the site has historically dragged its feet about banning subreddits that many felt were in violation of site rules, in some cases allowing them to remain, and it has now stated that racist content is permissible.
As bitcoin popularity grew, so did the number of companies accepting it as a payment method. Dell was one of the early big companies to accept it; Microsoft, too, let customers pay for subscriptions using the digital currency. Reddit adopted bitcoin as a payment option for Gold way back in 2013, but quietly changed that in recent days, blaming Coinbase and bugs for its decision.
For tax collectors at the IRS, bitcoin season is upon us. Today we're taking a peek at the most basic elements - the need-to-know parts - of taxes in the United States when it comes to bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. As one Redditor found out recently, taxes on crypto could be simple - or they could be absolutely terrifyingly bad to behold. OF NOTE: None of what we present here should be taken as financial advice, as we are not accountants - all users should seek professional help (especially if they're frequent readers of articles here on SlashGear.)
Reddit has finally spoken up about recent reports pointing toward the presence of Russia propaganda on its platform. The company wasn't ignoring the reports, company CEO Steve Huffman said in a post, but rather being "careful to not tip our hand too much" during its own investigation into the matter. According to Huffman, who posted under his handle /u/spez, "We take the integrity of Reddit extremely seriously, both as the stewards of the site and as Americans."
A tipster spilled what seemed to be a whole lot of details on the Samsung Galaxy S9 a bit over a week before the main reveal event. This tipster decided they'd risk revealing the identity of whoever it was that allowed them to handle the Galaxy S9 in the process, writing their AMA on Reddit. This Redditor suggested that they "got to use [the Galaxy S9] for about 20 min" and that they "got pretty familiar with the device."
Weeks ago, a disturbing subreddit called "deepfakes" featuring adult content edited using artificial intelligence went viral. The content seemingly featured popular actresses (and the occasional actor) in adult movies, though none of those celebrities had actually participated in the content and none had given their consent. The videos were edited using artificial intelligence, and now Reddit is squashing them.
Reddit may be a bastion of throwaway accounts, but many users have regular accounts that they use as their more permanent posting handle. Some of those accounts are valuable; others contain personal content, maybe even messages linking it to the user's identity. Security is important for those reasons and more, and now Reddit has finally an adequate solution.