Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Vodacom’s prepaid customers are a target of rogue fraudsters who are using a gateway developed ‘Wireless Application Service Providers (WASPs)’ to steal millions of airtime in a mass scale – often the poorest South Africans – with virtually no risk of criminal charges. One industry player, who has been operating…

Google is testing a feature for curbing subscriptions for push notifications in its Chrome browser. The Windows Club has spotted several Chromium Gerrit commits which indicate that developers are working on a flag set to be added to Chrome’s experimental Canary 86 browser. The flag is called #Push-Subscription-With Expiration-Time and will automatically…

Nokia has reported better than expected second-quarter earnings on the back of improved margins for telecoms equipment and software despite the coronavirus crisis causing a substantial drop in revenue. The Espoo, Finland-based maker of new-generation 5G mobile and other networks said that its net profit for the April-June period was up 22%…

Reports coming through are that fitness brand Garmin has paid a ransom worth millions of dollars to the group that encrypted its data and forced it to shut down its systems. According to some sources, the deal was not made by Garmin directly but was brokered through a third party…

Covid-19 has altered industries across the globe highlighting just how dependant the world is on data. The Global Data Center Security Solutions Market is expected to grow by $5 billion during 2020-2024. The role of the data centre has never been more important during this pandemic, enabling business continuity with…

SuperSport has announced a major overhaul to its sports channels on DStv, launching a new lineup of channels across bouquets. The broadcaster said it has dropped the numbering system it has used for its channels for the past two decades, replacing it with a thematic offering around individual sports. SuperSport…

MTN Group Limited may sell part or all of its $243 million interest in Jumia Technologies AG as Africa’s biggest wireless carrier looks to pay down debt and enter new markets. MTN, which had previously marked the online retailer as a non-core business, is reviving plans for a sale after…

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has agreed to pay $450 million for a stake in security firm ADT Inc. as part of a partnership to create smart-home security products. Google will get a 6.6% stake in newly created Class-B shares of the Boca Raton, Florida-based firm, and ADT will integrate Google’s hardware…

Twitter Inc. is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for alleged privacy violations, another setback for a company that has struggled in recent years to protect private user data and account security. The FTC is probing the company for using phone numbers uploaded for security purposes to target people with advertising…

MTN has unveiled Chenosis, a pan-African API marketplace that the company states will allow developers and businesses to discover and subscribe to what will become the largest library of open APIs published on the continent. The company said that Chenosis will include a broad spectrum of API products and services from…

Protests against economic turmoil, arrests and human-rights abuses in Zimbabwe have moved online with a hashtag that’s plays on the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The #ZimbabweanLivesMatter tag started after security forces blocked a street demonstration last week. It draws on the success of the global movement highlighting racial injustice that gained prominence…

Microsoft has announced a collaboration with several industry partners to create the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) – a new cross-industry initiative to improve the security of open source software. Hosted at the Linux Foundation, OpenSSF was founded in partnership with Google, Red Hat, IBM, NCC Group, and OWASP, as well as…

Days after the U.S. government challenged Facebook Inc.’s growing power over social media in a Congressional hearing, the Trump administration handed the company a gift. Late last week, the president said he planned to shut down Facebook’s most formidable challenger: Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok. That threat sparked a panic among users…

The House Antitrust Committee will hear from the CEOs of Apple – Tim Cook, Amazon – Jeff Bezos, Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg, and Google – Sundar Pichai where they are expected to defend their companies before the House Antitrust Subcommittee today in a hearing that will make tech industry history,…

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is gaining share in the lucrative market for server chips, the latest sign it’s benefiting from close ties to a major Taiwanese factory partner to win orders from larger rival Intel Corp. Shares surged in late trading. Strides in server chips will help propel third-quarter…

The list of 2020 Primetime Emmy nominations announced on Tuesday includes over 250 nominations for shows and television movies from video streaming services. Six of the 16 networks with the most nominations were streaming services, with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu claiming the top spots of these contenders. Netflix’s record total…

This is not the first time that Tencent’s market cap has surpassed Facebook’s. It happened in late 2017 and a number of times briefly in 2018. But in 2019, Facebook stayed ahead of Tencent for the whole year, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. And again this time Tencent’s market capitalization has…

Friday marked the third straight losing week for the tech-heavy benchmark. Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) rose over 15%, bucking a mostly down day for tech stocks. Its primary rival, Intel, fell over 15% Intel’s stock fell after it said its latest-generation chips would be delayed, preventing so-called “7-nanometer” chips from appearing in computers…

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan spent almost an hour on Thursday discussing an idea that would once have been unthinkable and what was once considered heresy for the world’s largest semiconductor company: Not manufacturing its own chips. Intel’s shares tumbled as much as 18% Friday morning. Outsourcing is…

In its early days, Twitter referred to itself as the “free speech wing of the free speech party.” The quote might not have been totally serious, but for years it rang true: its pseudonymous accounts and permissive rules gave the platform an anything-goes sensibility. A few years and high-profile harassment campaigns…