The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US has fined T-Mobile $60 million for failing to report and stop data breaches, the biggest civil penalty they have ever levied. Engadget.com reports that T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom, a German based company. The fines date back to 2020 when T-Mobile bought Sprint. The CFIUS put some conditions on the purchase, including some related to protecting consumer data. The Committee found that T-Mobile didn’t comply with these conditions by failing to secure data and then by failing to report unauthorized access to this data. 

Google’s Threat Analysis Group just published a new report on a group called APT 42, a group that Google says has aggressively tried to compromise both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns…in addition to Israeli Military, government, and diplomatic organizations. According to Wired.com, APT 42 is believed to be under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They target about a dozen people associated with both the Trump and Biden campaigns during May and June. This appears to be the same group who targeted both campaigns in 2020. Google says it has blocked ‘numerous’ ongoing attempts to log into the accounts of the campaign officials. They have been pretty successful with their phishing operations…so as always…be careful with your email and for that matter, texts. Don’t react and click on a link or call a number you don’t know without doing a check first. 

California is finally…finally rolling out support for digital driver’s licenses and IDs in the Apple Wallet App on iPhone and the Apple Watch. Often in the vanguard of tech, macrumors.com notes that California is the 6th state to add the feature. More than 500,000 people have used the California DMV Wallet App, which was something of a test before the Golden State rolled out license for the Apple Wallet. IDs and licenses stored in the Wallet app on ‌iPhone‌ or iPad can be used for TSA screenings at select airports and for age verification at select stores. Right now, California’s mobile wallet support is still in a pilot stage, and only 1.5 million participants are able to sign up. California requires people to continue to carry a physical license or ID card because the digital license is not accepted by law enforcement, state government agencies, and most businesses.

Threads has announced several new features. Techcrunch.com reports that you will be able to store multiple drafts, rearrange columns on the desktop, and gain insights into user audiences. The TweetDeck type multicolumn view came out in May, but now you can rearrange them in a different order. The one thing you can’t do that most would like is move the ‘For You’ column from its default position as the first column on the left side. An insights screen shows age, gender, and location of people who view and engage with you. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

Technology, Apple. News, IOS, Mobile Payments