Author: pekandesigns

Popular animated avatar creator app Boomoji, with more than five million users across the world, exposed the personal data of its entire user base after it failed to put passwords on two of its internet-facing databases. The China-based app developer left the ElasticSearch databases online without passwords — a U.S.-based database for its international customers and […]

Twitter says the number of government demands for data on its users has shot up in the past year. In its latest transparency report out Thursday, the social media giant said it received 10 percent more requests between January and June than on its previous reporting period — the largest percentage increase in three years. […]

As companies shift to CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery), they face a problem around monitoring and fixing problems in builds that have been deployed. How do you deal with an issue after moving onto the next delivery milestone? Harness, the startup launched last year by AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal, wants to fix that with a new […]

Ever wonder how much of your personal information is accessible to marketers? Well, there’s a new service called My Number Lookup that makes it easy (and free) for you to check the data that’s publicly available and tied to your mobile phone number. The service was created by Keepsafe, maker of privacy-centric products. While there […]

Amazon will again enable procrastinators to hold off on completing their Christmas shopping until the last minute. The company today announced it will offer free, two-hour delivery up until midnight on Christmas Eve, powered by Prime Now, in select markets. Prime Now is currently available across 30 U.S. cities, Amazon says. In addition, Prime members […]

Sovrn recently raised a $25 million in new funding with the goal of expanding beyond the adtech business through acquisitions. Now it’s announcing the first of those deals: It’s acquiring affiliate marketing company VigLink. Sovrn first launched in 2014 — made up, as CEO Walter Knapp put it, from “bits and pieces of different companies.” […]

Robinhood is undercutting the big banks by forgoing brick-and-mortar branches with its new zero-fee checking and savings account features. With no overdraft or monthly fees, a juicy 3 percent interest rate, and a claim of more US ATMs than the five biggest banks combined, Robinhood is using the scalability of software to pass impressive perks […]

Soon after Google unveiled the top trends in what people searched for in 2018, Baidu published what captivated the Chinese in a parallel online universe, where most of the West’s mainstream tech services including Google and Facebook are inaccessible. Google’s year in search 2018: the World Cup, Fortnite GIFs and Bitcoin China’s top search engine […]

Getaround, the peer-to-peer car-sharing service that first launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in 2011, is expanding a partnership with Uber that gives users access to rideshare-ready vehicles. The program, which launched as a pilot in May 2017 in San Francisco, is now available to Getaround customers in Los Angeles and San Diego. Two more cities, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. will soon […]