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March 25, 2019: Kevin Dugan, New York Post reporter, on Earnin app

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This week: Kevin Dugan on the new "Earnin" app

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This week's pointers:

• Kevin Dugan on Twitter: @KevinTDugan

• Popular cash advance app Earnin operating in payday loan 'gray area,' critics claim (by Kevin Dugan in the New York Post, March 21): "If the service was deemed to be a loan, the $9 tip suggested by Earnin for a $100, one-week loan would amount to a 469 percent APR. 'It appears to me they’re calling it tips so they don’t have to disclose an APR, so they don’t have to comply with the Truth in Lending Act,' Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, told The Post."

• Google Fined $1.7 Billion by E.U. for Unfair Advertising Rules (NYT, March 20): "With the announcement on Wednesday, the European fines against Google total roughly 8.2 billion euros, or $9.3 billion. . . . Apple, which in 2016 was ordered to pay Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes, is now under scrutiny for its App Store policies. Facebook is facing separate inquiries related to its business practices and handling of user data." ... "Ms. Vestager’s office announced last year that Amazon was under investigation for its treatment of independent sellers who use its website to reach customers."

• Thousands of Reddit users are trying to delete Google from their lives, but they're finding it impossible because Google is everywhere (Business Insider, March 23): "Use privacy-focused DuckDuckGo or Startpage.com as your default search engine. Swap Gmail for ProtonMail. Use Apple Maps."

• Facebook Isn’t Going After Bitcoin. It’s Going After the Dollar (Ted Livingston, March 20): "Today 900 million people use WeChat for daily transactions, totaling nearly $10 trillion of payments per year. In China WeChat replaced cash. Facebook is about to have all the pieces needed to execute the WeChat playbook."

• Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years (Brian Krebs, March 21): "Between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users may have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. ... Facebook software engineer Scott Renfro said, 'We’ve not found any cases so far in our investigations where someone was looking intentionally for passwords, nor have we found signs of misuse of this data.'"

• Killer Robots Movie Night at WFMU - Friday, May 10 in Monty Hall. See you there!



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