Tech Talk

In India, it’s Google and Walmart-owned PhonePe that are racing neck-and-neck to be the top player in the mobile payments market, while Facebook remains mired in a regulatory maze for WhatsApp Pay’s rollout. In May, more than 75 million users transacted on Google Pay app, ahead of Walmart -owned PhonePe’s 60 million users, and SoftBank -backed Paytm’s 30 million users, people familiar with the companies’ figures told TechCrunch. Google still lags Paytm’s reach with merchants, but the Android -maker has maintained its overall lead in recent months despite every player losing momentum due to one of the most stringent lockdowns globally in place in India. Google declined to comment. Paytm, once the dominant player in India, has been struggling to sustain its user base for nearly two years. The company had about 60 million transacting users in January last year, said people familiar with the matter. Data sets consider transacting users to be those who have made at least one payme

Rumors have suggested Apple is working on a services bundle that will offer multiple Apple services like Apple TV + and Apple Music for one flat monthly rate, and according to 9to5Mac , code found in iOS 13.5.5 seemingly confirms Apple's bundle plans. Files in iOS 13.5.5 reference a "bundle offer" and a "bundle subscription," and these files weren't in earlier versions of iOS. The files are said to be related to the "management system of Apple's own services subscriptions like Apple News +." Apple has been rumored to be working on some kind of services bundle since 2018 , and most of the rumors have indicated that the company is mulling including ‌Apple Music‌, ‌Apple TV‌+, and ‌Apple News‌+ in the bundle offering. Right now, ‌Apple Music‌ is priced at $9.99 per month, ‌Apple TV‌+ is $4.99 per month, and ‌Apple News‌+ is $9.99 per month, so a bundle would presumably offer customers a discount while also enticing them to subscribe to a

Team8 , the Israel-based firm founded by a team of intelligence vets and backed by the likes of Intel, Microsoft, Walmart and Cisco to  develop and spin out cybersecurity startups, is announcing a step change in its business model that underscores the huge amount of activity we’re seeing these days in the sector. Alongside its studio model, it’s launching a venture capital arm, with the aim of investing in Seed, A, and B rounds for a variety of cybersecurity startups, not just those that it’s building itself. So far, according to documents that we’ve seen, it’s raised $104 million for Team8 Capital, as the arm will be called, and we understand that it will be adding more funds in the coming weeks. The firm has already made three investments out of the fund, with a fourth on the way, Sarit Firon, co-head of the Capital division, said in an interview, although she wouldn’t disclose the names of the startups getting funded. Firon (pictured, right) is an interesting appointment and h

An Australian man has been find AU$5,000 and given an 18-month "recognisance," after he was found guilty of extracting employee details from Apple and posting them on Twitter. According to Bega District News , 24-year-old Abe Crannaford appeared in Eden Local Court on Wednesday for sentencing after pleading guilty in February to two counts of unauthorised access or modification of restricted data. In mid-2017 and early 2018, Crannaford extracted restricted information meant for employees only from the large US-based corporation. The hacking culminated in January 2018 when Crannaford published employee details on his Twitter account and allegedly provided links to the corporation's firmware on GitHub. The potential maximum sentence for the offences committed is two years' imprisonment and fines of $10,000 or more for each matter. Magistrate Doug Dick fined $5,000, however he did not impose a sentence on Crannaford, instead giving him an 18-month period of &qu

What you need to know Amazon's Summer Sale could happen on June 22 according to new report. It could last from seven to ten days. Amazon hopes to drive customer engagement and jump-start sales with the event. This isn't the first time we've heard of a new Amazon Summer Sale that's rumored to take place this year, and it's likely not the last either. The team at CNBC has posted some new information that indicates that the Amazon Summer Sale is set to kick off on June 22 and could run as long as seven to ten days. Amazon has reportedly sent out an email to sellers informing them of this "Fashion Summer Sale", though the email does indicate that this event will be "by invitation only", meaning it may not be quite as big as Amazon's annual Prime Day event usually is. CNBC was able to review one of the emails that was sent out, part of which read: "We are having the Biggest Summer Sale event to drive excitement and jump-start

Worried about your privacy? You can easily find all the apps that are sharing your location on an Android phone, and disable access so they won't be able to broadcast your location anymore. Here's what you need to know, and what you can do to ensure apps don't use location data in the background. Products used in this guide All the basics: OnePlus 7T ($499 at OnePlus) How to find apps that are sharing your location on Android Apps like Google Maps, Uber, and Lyft won't work without location access, but you can enable access just before you use these services. Then there are services like Instagram and Facebook that access your location to provide details of nearby points of interest. If you need to provide an app with your location details, you can always enable it just before you use a service like Uber or Lyft. Here's how you can see all the apps that are sharing your location: Open Settings from the home screen. Scroll down to the bottom of the p

Location data can be very useful in documenting where you took your vacation photos or pictures for proof of things like a traffic accident, but if you leave location data on all the time, it can be used against you if someone you don't trust gets ahold of your stuff. In order to protect yourself and those around you, here's how to strip out location info from photos you've taken — and more importantly, how to keep it from getting added to your photos in the first place! How to turn off location data in the Camera app Open the Camera app on your phone. Tap the Settings option on the viewfinder. For Samsung phones, the settings gear is in the top left corner. For Google Pixel phones, you'll need to tap the downward-facing arrow at the top of the screen, then tap the settings gear in the menu that appears. Turn off the Location toggle in the setting menu. On Samsung phones, Location is near the bottom, but it's the first setting in Google Camera advanc