When data is regarded as the vital fuel for digital economy, data-access requests that most Chinese mobile applications make outnumber their non-Chinese alternatives. Either available on the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store, these applications usually list permissions they require for installation. A comparative analysis of Play Store information reveals startling facts about the volume of data Chinese applications seek from their users. TikTok, owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, requests around 30 permissions compared to its German counterpart Dubsmash seeking 19 and Scandinavian counterpart Funimate asking them…

Facebook appears to be blocking the hashtag #Sikh for some of users. This was highlighted by a huge number of users on Twitter and independently verified by Gadgets 360 as well. Curiously, the blocking of the hashtag appears to be happening selectively, as some of the  members accounts could not search for the term, but results were showing up for others. Gadgets 360 has reached out to Facebook for more details about why #Sikh was hidden, and why this appears to have been done only for some users but not…

Zoom has attracted millions of the free and paying customers amid the pandemic, in part because users could join a meeting – something that now happens 300 million times a day – without registering. Video conferencing provider Zoom plans to strengthen encryption of video calls hosted by paying clients & institutions such as schools, but not by users for its free consumer accounts, a company official said on Friday. The company, whose business has boomed with the covid-19 pandemic, discussed the move on a call with “civil liberties groups and…