UK banking company insists customers’ funds and data are safe despite problems with sign-in, card payments, transfers and withdrawals
Revolut customers have been unable to access their money after the banking app went down, affecting a number of services including card payments, cash withdrawals and transfers.
The UK banking company said its app was down because of a “service disruption” affecting several services, but insisted that customers’ funds and data were safe.
Continue reading...Appointment or renewal reminder appears in victims’ calendar to lure them into logging in to fake Google, Microsoft or PayPal page
You’re preparing for the week ahead and take a look at your Google calendar. There’s an entry for a meeting that you must have completely forgotten. The note that pops up when you click on it says you’ll be reviewing a project and includes a link to more details. Confused, you follow it to find out more; the website you land on asks for logon details, and you provide them.
Unfortunately, this was not a failure of your memory but a calendar phishing scam. You have handed your name and password to fraudsters who will sell it on in a batch with other people’s details, use it to break into your work email, or to persuade you that they are contacting you from your bank, or another institution.
Continue reading...Order on two construction sites comes after Google failed to carry out environmental impact assessments
Google has been ordered to temporarily stop work on two datacentres in Finland after failing to do the necessary environmental impact assessments on its construction sites.
The planned datacentres in Muhos and Kajanni are part of a €13bn (£11bn) project across multiple sites in northern Finland by the technology company amid huge demand for space to house online infrastructure.
Continue reading...Disclosure comes after OpenAI and Anthropic hacks amid fears that tech firms unable to control powerful AI models
In a first for Google, the company confirmed that its AI model, Gemini, breached the security of three other companies in May. The hacks occurred during a cybersecurity evaluation by AI-security firm Irregular.
Irregular, an Israel-based startup that scrutinizes the security of advanced AI systems, was also at the center of some of the recent OpenAI and Anthropic hacks of third-party entities, including OpenAI’s breach of AI software company, Hugging Face.
Continue reading...Lisa Nandy says government will introduce legislation after talks deadline ends without breakthrough
Apple and Google will be forced to block explicit images on children’s smartphones by law in the UK after talks failed to produce a breakthrough, the government has said.
The legislation commitment puts ministers on a collision course with two of the biggest players in Silicon Valley, months after the government announced a social media ban for under-16s.
Continue reading...LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution
The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland, a report has found.
In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Electoral Commission calls for new controls, as Demos finds tools made up fake scandals, invented candidates or gave wrong date
The Electoral Commission has called for new legal controls over misinformation from AI chatbots, after a thinktank found they had made serious mistakes during the recent Scottish election.
The thinktank Demos said its investigation had found that AI services gave voters misinformation to 34% of the questions it posed, which it said raised worrying questions about the lack of regulation of AI platforms in the UK.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Worker pointed to Iran war and Pentagon’s Anthropic feud as indications the department is ‘not a responsible partner’
Workers developing Google’s artificial intelligence products in the UK have voted to unionize, in part out of concerns about a deal between the company and the US military that was announced last week.
In a letter slated to go to management on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, workers at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research laboratory, requested recognition of the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives of the lab’s UK-based staff.
Continue reading...Ashley MacIsaac, who is seeking $1.5m in civil lawsuit, says inaccurate information led to concert cancellation
An acclaimed Canadian fiddle player has launched a $1.5m civil lawsuit against Google, alleging that the online giant defamed him by falsely identifying him as a sex offender in an AI-generated summary of his life and career.
Ashley MacIsaac, a three-time Juno award-winning musician, filed the claim in the Ontario superior court of justice, asserting that Google was liable for the “foreseeable republication” of its AI-generated Overview feature, which previously published defamatory claims that he had been convicted of multiple criminal offences, including the sexual assault of a woman, internet luring involving a child with the intention of sexual assaulting the child, and assault causing bodily harm.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Varun Chandra’s talks with Google, Meta, Apple and others raise fears of ‘lobbying behind closed doors’
An influential government adviser close to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves held 16 undisclosed meetings with top US tech executives, the Guardian can reveal.
The No 10 business aide Varun Chandra discussed regulatory changes, AI and Donald Trump’s second administration with tech corporations during confidential meetings between October 2024 and October 2025. In one meeting he offered to help a top executive meet the prime minister directly.
Continue reading...Albanese defends plan forcing Meta, Google and TikTok to make deals with Australian news publishers through a levy
The Trump administration has described Australia’s moves to make big tech companies pay for news online as “extortion” but Anthony Albanese defended the plan by saying it was about protecting and rewarding media outlets for the work they produce.
Labor’s plan to encourage Meta, Google and TikTok to make deals with Australian news publishers, or face a 2.25% levy, is likely to be supported by the Coalition and Greens in parliament. But a bigger problem may be the ire of Donald Trump, who has strongly opposed extra regulation being imposed on US-based tech companies. A major tech industry lobby group on Wednesday urged the White House to consider retaliatory trade measures.
Continue reading...The tech giant has released a statement acknowledging the use of different border displays between Western Sahara and Morocco
The dotted lines illustrating the border between Western Sahara and Morocco, indicating the former’s disputed territory status, have never been visible to people using Google Maps in the latter.
After media reports last week highlighted the discrepancy, tying it to the UN security council endorsing the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the tech company released a statement acknowledging it has always displayed the border differently depending on the search region.
Continue reading...Military experts say facility on Christmas Island would be valuable asset to monitor Chinese submarine and naval activity
Google plans to build a large AI datacentre on Australia’s remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Department of Defence earlier this year, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with officials.
Plans for the datacentre on the tiny island located 350km south of Indonesia have not previously been reported, and many details, including its projected size, cost and potential uses, remain secret.
Continue reading...Strong demand for ads and cloud services powered tech giant’s growth as it makes multibillion-dollar AI investment
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, displayed steady growth in its core advertising business and cloud computing division as it reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street estimates as it reported its first quarter of $100bn in revenue.
The company thrilled Wall Street – shares rose in after-hours trading – even as it announced that it would spend billions more than previously predicted. Alphabet raised its capital expenditure guidance in financial filings, declaring it would spend between $91bn and $93bn in the upcoming year, nearly all of it on infrastructure like datacenters to support artificial intelligence products, which are becoming an integral part of the company’s business. That estimate is up from an original declaration of $75bn in February and a revised figure of $85bn announced in July.
Continue reading...Search engine added ‘STI testing’ to list of sensitive topics, censoring important public health campaign, Greens leader says
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Google has blocked ads for a commonwealth-funded STI awareness campaign as “adult content” in a move sexual health organisations say frustrates efforts to share evidence-based public health information online.
The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday that the tech company’s moderation practices had recently undermined the reach and cost-effectiveness of the national campaign, run by Sexual and Reproductive Health Australia (SRHA).
Continue reading...Regulators ordered the tech giant to end ‘self-preferencing practices’ in advertising services but declined to force sale
European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a €2.95bn ($3.5bn) fine for breaching the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company as well as a retreat from previous threats to break up the tech giant.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the US company to end its “self-preferencing practices” and take steps to stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.
Continue reading...Developer of ChatGPT says new tools will be ‘for wide benefit’, echoing announcement by Mark Zuckerberg
OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models.
The ChatGPT developer has announced two “open weight” large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by developers.
Continue reading...Google to host major event featuring popular YouTubers inside Parliament House as PM downplays tech giant’s legal threat
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YouTube is making a last-ditch effort to persuade the government not to include it in the under-16s social media ban, objecting to what it says is an “abrupt policy reversal” and arguing the video service is not a social media platform.
Google, YouTube’s owner, will host a major event featuring popular YouTubers inside Parliament House this week, as a final decision looms on which tech platforms will be off-limits for children.
Continue reading...CMA proposes tightening regulation, which could lead to site giving users option to choose alternative services
Google could be forced to make a series of changes to its search business, including giving internet users an option to choose an alternative service, after the UK competition watchdog proposed tightening regulation of the company.
The Competition and Market Authority is preparing to give the world’s largest search engine the designation “strategic market status”, a term for tech companies deemed to have considerable market heft that enables the watchdog to use extra powers to regulate them.
Continue reading...Organizer points to president’s anti-diversity push as companies join Adidas and Clorox in withdrawing support
In another blow to one of the largest celebrations of LGTBQ+ people in North America, Pride Toronto has unexpectedly lost two more major corporate sponsors, just weeks before the festival in a setback the festival’s organizer says is direct result of Donald Trump’s campaign to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the US.
Google and Home Depot both announced their plans to abandon the festival in the form of one-line emails, said Kojo Modeste, the executive director of the Canadian event.
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