Google’s Play Store for Android smartphone apps seems to have taken an issue with reporting on cryptocurrencies and blockchain news, taking down several notable apps, including ours. The newest block? As of 2:00 PM EST, apps of crypto news sites including Cointelegraph and CoinDesk were unavailable on the Play Store. Screenshots of results returned for Cointelegraph and CoinDesk Google did not contact Cointelegraph regarding the planned removal. We have reached out to the company but received no response as of press time. This article will be updated with new information or comment from the company should we receive it. For …

Speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, cybersecurity experts Aaron Turner and Georgia Weidman discussed two-factor authentication and biometrics as means to securing one’s phone. Although they concur that the two-factor authentication is the way to go, there are certain caveats. Authenticator apps like Google Authenticator generally provide better security than SMS-based schemes, however, they are only as good as the devices running them. iOS v. Android — safest phones Turner also dispels the myth that iPhones are more secure than Android devices and warns against iPhones that run anything but the latest iOS 13. Amongst android smartphones, he …

Brave, a major privacy-oriented rival of popular browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox, now automatically redirects users to check out archived versions of pages that were removed from the web. Starting from Feb. 25, Brave browser users can instantly access archived content of “missing” pages on the Internet via Wayback Machine integration on the Brave desktop browser. In order to unlock the new feature, Brave has partnered with popular nonprofit digital library The Internet Archive, or Archive.org. The new feature debuted on Brave browser version 1.4 and is only available on desktop for now. Archive.org revealed the development in a …

Human resources firm Ranstad, which recently became global leader in the sector, has chosen to further automate its workflow using a smart contracts-focused blockchain. The firm’s 40,000 employees will be using an enterprise blockchain solution from New York-based Cypherium, which has struck partnerships with major cloud providers Google Cloud Wing, IBM Cloud, and Amazon Web Services. All of the paperwork-intensive processes involved in HR allocation, Randstad revealed on Feb. 28, will soon be automated using the platform in conjunction with Google Cloud. Automating verification Cypherium has a hybrid design, combining two consensus mechanisms: Proof-of-Work (PoW) and HotStuff (also used for …

The team behind Brave Browser thinks that Google has an unfair competitive advantage due to its massive trove of user data. In a submission filed with the United Kingdom’s consumer protection agency, Brave argued that the country’s failure to enforce European data protection laws gives Google an unfair advantage. Brave’s stance In an interview with Cointelegraph, Dr. Johnny Ryan, Brave’s chief policy and industry relations officer, insisted that it’s not about the competition between Chrome and Brave, but enforcing the laws that protect consumers: “RTB [Real-time-bidding, an auction for online ads] is the biggest data breach in the world, personal …

A new extortion scam targeting website owners serving banner ads through Google's AdSense program has begun circulating the Internet. The malicious scheme demands Bitcoin (BTC) in exchange for preventing an attack, which would purportedly lead to the users’ AdSense account suspension. The email-based extortion scheme was reported by security news and investigation blog KrebsOnSecurity, on Feb. 17. The blog post detailed that some site owners received a message as their site had been spotted by the malicious program as one seeking revenue from publishing an ad. The message ostensibly read: “Very soon the warning notice from above will appear at …

Independent research firm Fundstrat predicts that Hedera Hashgraph, the enterprise-grade public distributed ledger platform, could generate $1.9 billion in value across its network by 2024. Fundstart’s predictions are highlighted in their latest report, which analyzes Hedera’s recent growth. The report shows that Hedera’s platform has handled over 36 million transactions since September 2019 when the network became publicly available for anyone to build, test and deploy applications on it. Hedera’s distributed ledger technology is currently being used by companies such as Acoer to help track the spread of the deadly coronavirus, along with Armanino to provide a reliable source of …

Bitcoin (BTC) hitting $10,000 catapulted it back into mainstream consciousness — but internet consumers were paying attention before, data shows. Statistics from monitoring resource Bitinfocharts reveal that in early February, mentions of Bitcoin on Twitter alone spiked to two-year highs. 75,000 Bitcoin tweets per day At the time, BTC/USD traded at around $9,400, having reached its highest level since September 2019 several days previously. Tweets including Bitcoin reached 75,000 on Feb. 2, a huge contrast to standard behavior and the most since early 2018, as markets digested Bitcoin’s precipitous fall from all-time highs of $20,000. Subsequent days saw considerably fewer …

Prediction can be a bit of a gamble. And when cryptocurrency and blockchain are involved, it wouldn’t be surprising to see people shying away from scrying experiments of any sort. Blockchain gets a bad rep because of its relation to Bitcoin (BTC), the cryptocurrency that many love to hate due to its apparently volatile value. But according to George Gilder, co-founder of the Discovery Institute in Seattle: “Blockchain is the future...it will usher in a world beyond Google.” That’s a pretty hefty claim to make. In order for blockchain to truly flourish as the next “global fabric for value exchanges …

Hedera Hashgraph chose Google Cloud Platform as its preferred cloud provider for deploying its public networks. A Feb 11. post on Google blogs commends Hedera for the choice, while revealing that it is taking an active stake in the project’s governance. Hedera is set to use Google Cloud to host its public testnets and Hedera Consensus Service ecosystem. This allows Hedera developers to benefit from Google’s geographical coverage and infrastructure. Hedera is a distributed ledger technology project rooted in the enterprise world. It uses a hashgraph-based consensus algorithm to allow for multiple branches of blocks, as opposed to a single …

Former Google executive Surojit Chatterjee has joined Coinbase as the company’s new chief product officer. Before joining Coinbase, Chatterjee worked as a Google’s vice president of product, tallying 11 years at the internet company, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a Jan. 29 blog post announcing the hire. An experienced hire During his time at Google, Chatterjee headed up the internet giant’s shopping branch. Prior to Google, Chatterjee served at the helm of Indian e-commerce venue Flipkart as its head of product, the blog post detailed. “Surojit’s 11 years at Google will be valuable as we continue to scale Coinbase …

Prominent figures from a range of long-established companies found greener pastures in the blockchain realm in 2019. From BlackRock to Goldman Sachs, and from HSBC to the SEC, traditional industries saw some of their top personnel leave for new prospects in cryptocurrency over the past year. Early 2019 Frigid winter conditions in the crypto market failed to dissuade career moves into the industry. Despite the bearish market conditions of early 2019, many saw fit to join the blockchain movement and leave their familiar jobs behind. Tron hired David Labhart as the company’s first chief compliance officer. Labhart previously worked as …