Expert Tasks Young Scientists On Astronomy, Astrophysics

Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram Back After Global Outage

Social networking services including Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram are back up and running after going offline globally for almost six hours. The companies were down from about 16:00 GMT until around 22:00 on Monday. Facebook, while hinting at the outage blamed an internal technical issue, which not only affected Facebook’s services but reportedly also employees’ work passes and email. Facebook however said there was “no evidence that user data was compromised.” New York Time’s technology reporter, Sheera Frenkel, said part of the reason it took so long to fix the problem was that “the people trying to figure out what this problem was couldn’t even physically get into the building” to work out what had gone wrong. During the outage @WhatsApp wrote on Twitter that, “We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment.

Buhari Orders Conditional Lifting Of Twitter Ban

President Muhammadu Buhari has on Friday announced that he has directed a conditional lifting of the ban placed on Twitter operations in Nigeria. Buhari made the announcement during his nationwide broadcast to mark the country's 61st independence. He said the importance of Twitter, noting that some users have misused the platform to spread fake news and to promote ethnoreligious sentiments.

Computer Security Firm Norton Plans To Buy Avast For $8Bn

US cybersecurity titan NortonLifeLock is set to buy its Czech Republic rival, Avast for over $8 billion (6.7 billion euros). This was announced in a joint statement by both companies on Wednesday.

NIMC: 60m Nigerians Have Registered For NIN

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has announced that over 60 million Nigerians have National Identity Number (NIN) records in the National Identity Database.

Only Security Agencies Have Access To Phone Data-Pantami

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami has revealed that only security agencies in the country can access people’s personal phone information. The minister said this on Tuesday during the unveiling ceremony of the Nigerian Communications Commission’s Strategic Vision Plan (2021-2025), NCC Global Connect Podcast, and a Compendium of speeches.

Apple Introduces New Spy Tool To Help Combat Child Sexual Abuses

Apple announced that it is introducing a new feature that will scan iPhone and iPad users' photos to detect and report large collections of child sexual abuse images stored on its cloud servers to relevant authorities. As part of new safeguards involving children, the company also announced a feature that will analyze photos sent and received in the Messages app to or from children to see if they are explicit. Apple also is adding features in its Siri digital voice assistant to intervene when users search for related abusive material.

WhatsApp To Let Users Message Without Their Phones

For the first time, WhatsApp is introducing a new feature that will allow users message from a computer without needing to have their phones at hand. At present, WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook is linked to a user’s phone. It has an app for desktop, but until now users have needed their phones on and connected to be able to send and receive messages and make calls. But the new feature will let users send and receive messages “even if your phone battery is dead.” Up to four other devices, like PCs (Mac or Windows) and tablets, can be used together, WhatsApp said. WhatsApp users will also be able to enjoy video and audio chats on WhatsApp for PC without their phone.