• A warning has been issued after reports that Snapchat users were being targeted by criminals, who tried to extort money by threatening to reveal private photos and taking over accounts.
• Following a number of incidents, users are being advised to watch out for any suspicious activity or communications from friends accounts in order to stay safe while using the app.
• Criminals contact users over the social media app from another hacked account. This gives the false impression that the account is owned by someone the user knows.
• The fraudsters have then been reported to deceive people by claiming to be a friend who needs help with their account or needs money to help solve a problem. 
• The fraudster’s goal is to trick the user into handing over control of their Snapchat account in order to access their photos, personal details, and contacts list.

• Microsoft has confirmed that it is planning to take over TikTok, after a meeting between President Trump and CEO Satya Nadella. 
• This news comes as President Trump confirmed he is planning to tackle supposed national security risks associated with TikTok and other chinese software companies. 
• Reuters reported that Trump will give Bytedance (TikTok’s parent company) 45 days to negotiate a sale of TikTok to Microsoft.
• Chinese state media said banning Tik Tok would be “a barbaric act of a rogue government” and rejected US claims about national security fears.

• A man living in Bognor Regis – on the UK south coast – is one of three individuals charged over a major Twitter hack, according to the US Department of Justice. Californian authorities filed felony charges against Mason Sheppard, 19.
• The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) confirmed it had searched a property in Bognor Regis with police on Friday. A teenager in Tampa and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were also charged in Florida.
• US Attorney David L Anderson said the arrests proved “nefarious hacking… for fun or profit” did not pay off.
• Twitter accounts of multiple high-profile US figures were hijacked in an apparent Bitcoin scam on 15 July.

• Twitter has permanently banned white nationalist David Duke for repeatedly violating its rules about “hateful conduct”.
• The platform changed its policy in March and no longer lets people share links to articles that include “hateful content” or the incitement of violence.
• The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an anti-hate organisation, describes Duke as “perhaps America’s most well-known racist and anti-Semite”.
• He was banned from YouTube in June.
• Duke’s final tweet was linked to an interview he had conducted with Germar Rudolf, who was convicted of Holocaust denial in Germany, where it is a criminal offence.

• Facebook has blocked the accounts of a dozen allies of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, after Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the 12 accounts blocked back in May. They are under investigation for allegedly spreading false news about judges in the country. 
• A Supreme Court judge said on Friday that Facebook had not fully complied with the earlier order.
• A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the company had complied with the order, which it called “extreme” by “restricting the ability for the target pages and profiles to be seen from IP locations in Brazil.”
• The Supreme Court fined Facebook 1.92 million reais (about $368,000) for not blocking worldwide access to the accounts in question. It could have faced additional daily fines about about 100,00 reais (about $19,000).

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