Category: Tech News

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After a rough show in 2023 defined by double standards, The Game Awards finally has a grip on how to make its mishmash format work.

A federal court has denied TikTok’s request for a temporary pause of a law that could result in a ban of the app next month. The ruling, which came in response to an emergency injunction filed by TikTok earlier this week, is the latest legal setback for the company as it tries to avoid a total ban of its app in the United States.

In its request for a delay in the law taking effect, TikTok indicated that it planned to appeal to the Supreme Court. The company’s lawyers also cited the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump may want to take a different approach given some of Trump’s past comments about the app. But in a brief order, a panel of three judges denied that request, writing that such a pause was “unwarranted.”

TikTok’s future now depends on the Supreme Court, though there’s no guarantee the court will agree to hear the case. “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech,” the company said in a statement. “The voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world will be silenced on January 19th, 2025 unless the TikTok ban is halted.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-loses-its-bid-to-pause-the-law-that-could-ban-it-next-month-004200884.html?src=rss

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has seen an alarming rise in gamified job scams over the past year. The FTC says that reports of job scams have quadrupled each year since 2022 topping out at 20,000 reports at a cost of $41 million in total during the first six months of the year.

Job or task scams often involve the scammer asking someone to do a relatively simple task online such as liking videos or rating product images in assigned sets using terms like “product boosting” or “app optimization,” according to the FTC. People are promised higher payments for completing a certain amount of sets that may pay out small amounts at first but they end up costing more than they pay out in the long run.

Scammers will reach out to people via text messages or communication apps like Whatsapp offering them a task job. The most common type of this scam usually involves some kind of cryptocurrency. Then the scammer may ask their target to deposit some money or “charge up” their account through an app in order to start working on new and bigger sets of tasks. They may even try to convince their victims by hearing testimonials from fake recipients about how much money they made for completing relatively simple tasks.

The victim will “charge up” their accounts with their own money in order to avoid losing what the app shows they’ve earned in the hopes they’ll get their deposited money and the fee they are owed. Instead, the money they’ve been paid isn’t real and any money they’ve deposited to “charge up” their account is lost for good.

The FTC recommends ignoring offers from unknown text or WhatsApp messages and never paying someone for the promise of being paid at a later time or date. The commission also recommends steering clear of any job offers that involve rating or liking things online, a practice the FTC says is “illegal and no honest company will do it.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/the-ftc-warns-gamified-job-scams-are-on-the-rise-233029615.html?src=rss

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