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Host your websites for life while Hostdeal is on sale for just 40

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Get Hostdeal's lifetime web hosting plan for $39.99 (MSRP $360) and host up to eight websites with two lifetime domains included. Launching a website is easy. Paying for hosting every month is the part that tends to stick around and get annoying. Instead of another recurring subscription, HostDeal's Standard Plan lets you pay $39.99 once for lifetime web hosting, down from $360.


San Francisco Demands Apple and Google Delete AI 'Nudify' Apps From App Stores

WIRED

The City Attorney's Office sent the tech giants cease-and-desist letters this week telling them to stop profiting from 13 "face-swap" apps that are overwhelmingly used to target women and girls. Apple and Google have been ordered to take down apps that can "nudify" or "undress" people and told that they must stop profiting from the harmful technology, according to cease-and-desist letters sent to the companies seen by WIRED. On Thursday, San Francisco city attorney David Chiu sent legal notices to Apple and Google demanding that they remove from their app stores 13 face-swapping apps, which allow users to create AI-generated nonconsensual nude images. The letters say the Silicon Valley giants should stop "aiding and abetting" the sale of explicit deepfake images and "sever" business relationships with the app developers. "Generating non-consensual intimate images is illegal, harmful, and completely unacceptable," Chiu tells WIRED.


Claude did my FreshDirect shopping, with help from 1Password

PCWorld

PCWorld reports that Claude AI's new 1Password integration allows secure automation of online tasks like grocery shopping without exposing user passwords. The connector uses separate channels to maintain security, with 1Password handling login credentials while Claude performs website interactions on desktop Mac. Testing showed successful FreshDirect order completion, demonstrating potential for streamlining routine online chores, though social logins and passkeys aren't currently supported.


YouTube and X Have Become 'Gateways' to Nudify Apps

WIRED

YouTube and X Have Become'Gateways' to Nudify Apps A new study found that social media platforms are referring people to sites where they can create nonconsensual, sexually explicit deepfakes for as little as $1 an image. Most mainstream social media platforms have strict guidelines preventing the dissemination of nonconsensual intimate images (NCII), or sexually explicit photos and videos. But a new report finds that many social media platforms directly refer users to such content. The report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an anti-extremism and anti-disinformation organization, analyzes the online ecosystem that enables the proliferation of so-called "nudify" apps and websites, which allow users to digitally undress people without their consent. The study, which was published on Monday, looked at the top 10 apps and websites used to make nonconsensual explicit deepfakes, as well as how people are finding them.


Turn on Microsoft Edge's scareware blocker before you need it

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Turn on Microsoft Edge's scareware blocker before you need it Not every Windows PC runs Edge's scareware blocker by default. Here's the hardware cutoff and how to turn it on manually. Scareware websites are designed to frighten people into taking actions they wouldn't otherwise take, like installing malicious software or calling fake technical support. To help protect against these scams, Microsoft Edge includes a scareware blocker, although it may need to be enabled first.


Cloudflare will filter out web crawlers that serve AI companies

Engadget

The hosting platform wants sites to have more control over how AI companies use their content. Cloudflare has announced plans to automatically block mixed-use web crawlers that index websites for search engines and act as AI agents and trainers at the same time. The company previously offered its customers the optional ability to prevent crawlers from scraping their sites for AI chatbots, but now Cloudflare's stance is becoming more defensive by default. Now that the majority of traffic on the Internet is non-human, we must go further and act faster so that a sustainable ecosystem can emerge, Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's CEO and co-founder shared in a statement. Cloudflare's new tools and partnerships give website owners increased visibility and commercial opportunities and benefit AI companies that have bots with clear and transparent intent.


Goose, a New Gay Dating App, Appears to Be a Psyop

WIRED

Touted as a less-hookup-focused Grindr, Goose is an invite-only space for gay men. The problem is the people promoting it don't seem real. "You're receiving this because you're exactly the type of person we're building this for," the caption reads, accompanied by a code for an invite to a "members only community." The link leads to a login for Goose, a dating and friendship app for gay men with the slogan "for the boys," which allows users to "meet guys through the life you already have," according to its website. Neither does @danielmmulugeta, the cute dark-haired influencer who shared the above caption, with the exact same verbiage, on Close Friends' Stories.


Claude Helped a Hacker Find a Way to Issue Tickets to Almost Every US Music Festival

WIRED

A researcher found that using Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7, he could break into the website of Front Gate--used by every festival from Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo--and freely issue any ticket he chose. Fears about AI tools capable of autonomous hacking usually involve nightmare scenarios like the theft of nuclear launch codes or zeroed-out bank reserves. Far more plausible, it turns out, is asking AI to gain super-administrator access on a ticketing website and then issuing yourself and all of your friends free VIP backstage passes to Bonnaroo. That was the discovery of security researcher Ian Carroll, who used the AI tool Claude Opus 4.7 in April to discover a technique that allowed him full access to the systems of Front Gate Tickets, which handles ticketing for practically every major US music festival, from Lollapalooza and South by Southwest to Austin City Limits. Carroll found that Front Gate, which like Ticketmaster is a subsidiary of the event company Live Nation Entertainment, had a bug in its website that he--with Claude's help--could exploit to gain access to millions of customer or staff records and freely issue tickets for any event, of any value, to himself or whoever he chose.


The Pentagon Is Looking Into the Dialog Data Exposure for Unmasking National Security Officials

WIRED

Exposed records from the private group included the personal information of a senior White House intelligence official and an active-duty special operations officer. A data exposure at Dialog, the private events group cofounded by Peter Thiel, exposed personal information of multiple US national security personnel. These include an intelligence official on the National Security Council (NSC) and an active-duty intelligence officer supporting sensitive military operations, WIRED has learned. The Pentagon is now examining the matter. Personal information about intelligence and military personnel is among the data most sought by foreign intelligence services, which use it to identify, surveil, and approach US operatives abroad and at home.


Russia's Wiki warfare tries to distort reality, documents show

The Japan Times

Russia’s “Project 2026” wasn’t just to spread misinformation on social media — its main goal to create an alternative information ecosystem.