404 Media - Latest News and Information
Technology Pulse
EMAIL DIGESTS
Daily
Every morning
Weekly
Tuesday recap
EMAIL DIGESTS
Daily
Every morning
Weekly
Tuesday recap
Quittr, a self‑help app aimed at reducing pornography consumption, faced a serious security flaw in its Firebase backend that allowed unrestricted read/write access to user data. Independent researchers warned the company about the misconfiguration as early as September 2025, but the founders dismissed the reports and only patched the vulnerability weeks after 404 Media’s repeated inquiries. The exposed data included ages, porn‑viewing frequencies, and personal confessions, with many users identified as minors. The episode highlights the risks of inadequate security practices in apps handling sensitive personal information.
Governor Tony Evers vetoed Wisconsin Assembly Bill 105, which would have required age verification for porn and other adult‑content sites. The governor cited privacy intrusion, data‑security risks, and First Amendment concerns. The veto leaves Wisconsin among the few states without...
Minnesota photojournalist Rob Levine and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have filed a lawsuit against the FAA over a temporary flight restriction that bars drones within 3,000 feet of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities and mobile...
TeleGuard, a messaging app boasting over one million downloads, claims end‑to‑end encryption but stores users' private keys on its servers. Security researchers discovered that the keys can be accessed trivially, allowing anyone to decrypt messages. The flaw also enables attackers...
Scientists have genetically modified tobacco plants to biosynthesize five distinct psychedelic compounds typically sourced from psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca vines, and the Sonoran Desert toad. The engineered pathway, detailed in a Science Advances paper, yields measurable amounts of psilocybin, DMT, 5‑MeO‑DMT...
Sir Paul McCartney’s Reddit account was permanently banned after he posted concert photos from a Fonda Theatre show using a Dropbox link. The ban was applied site‑wide by Reddit administrators, not by the r/PaulMcCartney moderators, who clarified they lack authority...
Thomson Reuters, a global information provider, is supplying its CLEAR data‑broker service to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The data—names, addresses, vehicle registrations, Social Security numbers and ethnicity markers—appears to be feeding ICE’s targeting tools and may be integrated...
