Apple faces action for coercing Yahoo Japan to quash game platform: Report

Apple allegedly pressured Yahoo Japan to quash a game platform that offered competition to the App Store, prompting regulators in Japan to initiate an investigation, Nikkei Asian Review reported on Thursday.

Launched in July 2017, Yahoo Japan's Game Plus allows users to play games without needing to download apps and gives developers lesser restrictions in matters relating to sales, fees and software updates than Apple's App Store, the report said.

The platform elicited interests from a large number of companies including famed role-playing game maker Square Enix Holdings.

But Apple allegedly found this strategy of Yahoo Japan a direct threat to its model of App Store which contributes a big amount to the tech giant's revenue and pressurised Yahoo Japan to quash the platform.

WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton leaving company to start his own foundation

Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, now owned by Facebook Inc, will leave the messaging service company to start a new foundation, he said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Acton spent eight years with WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19 billion in cash and stock.

A Stanford alumnus, Acton co-founded WhatsApp with Ukrainian immigrant Jan Koum in 2009. The duo worked at Yahoo before starting WhatsApp.
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1 billion Yahoo accounts on sale, despite hacking indictments: Report

One billion Yahoo accounts are up for sale at $200,000 or best offer, a media report has said.

The passwords do not work, but the dates of birth, telephone numbers and security questions could still be useful to an adept cyberthief, a New York Times report said.

US Federal prosecutors unsealed indictments this week against four Russian men, including two hackers and two intelligence officers, responsible for a 2014 intrusion into Yahoo's systems that affected 500 million user accounts.

Despite this, data on 1 billion accounts - stolen in another attack on the company in 2013 - appeared to remain available on underground hacker forums on Friday, the NYT report added.

The authorities were tight-lipped about their investigation of the 2013 attack, which is the largest known breach of a private company's computer systems. The 2014 hacking of Yahoo's servers is the second largest.

"We're not willing to comment right now if there is a connection between the two investigations," Malcolm Palmore, who oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cybersecurity division in San Francisco, said on Wednesday in a brief interview after the government unveiled the indictments. (READ MORE)