Hashtag Trending – Apple suspends human voice analysis; Android app infected with malware;

Apple to stop listening to your voice commands, popular Android app has a deadly payload, social media impairs decision making?

Hashtag Trending on Amazon Alexa Google Podcasts badge - 200 px wide

That’s all the tech news that’s trending today. It’s Thursday, August 29th, and I’m your host, Tom Li.

Remember when Apple and Amazon were caught letting humans analyze your voice commands? Well, Apple has promised to no do it again–lest you give it permission. Trending on Reddit, Apple is looking to revise its voice transcription policies. The company has temporarily suspended human transcriptions, and will let users to opt-out of the program. While only 0.2 per cent of Siri voice commands were ever sent, The Financial Post reports that Apple is currently facing a class-action lawsuit over the recording fiasco.

Trending on Reddit, another popular Android app has been found to have malware. The app CamScanner, which scans PDF documents using the phone’s camera, has had a trojan until its June 30 update. For a bit of a backgrounder, a trojan is a type of malware that disguises itself as a legitimate app. It can be as benign as loading ads at random times, to financially damaging by installing ransomware. Although the app has removed the malware, Google still removed the app from its Play Store. We urge all users to remove it from their device as well.

Social media can be addicting, but can it affect your decision-making skills? According to a research paper published by the University of Michigan, heavy social media users showed certain behaviors found in people addicted to cocaine. In a test called Iowa Gambling Task, self-reported heavy social media users made worse choices in maximizing their winning odds than their peers. There’s too much to cover in just a few sentences, so we’ve linked the full report in our transcript.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Tom Li, thanks for listening.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Tom Li
Tom Li
Telecommunication and consumer hardware are Tom's main beats at Channel Daily News. He loves to talk about Canada's network infrastructure, semiconductor products, and of course, anything hot and new in the consumer technology space. You'll also occasionally see his name appended to articles on cloud, security, and SaaS-related news. If you're ever up for a lengthy discussion about the nuances of each of the above sectors or have an upcoming product that people will love, feel free to drop him a line at [email protected].

Related Tech News

Featured Tech Jobs

 

CDN in your inbox

CDN delivers a critical analysis of the competitive landscape detailing both the challenges and opportunities facing solution providers. CDN's email newsletter details the most important news and commentary from the channel.