The changes Verizon has made to its Selects program also changed at least some subscribers' privacy settings. Verizon (Engadget's former parent company) collected users' location, web browsing and mobile application usage data to send them marketing messages or offers under Selects, though subscribers could opt out if they wanted to. As Ars Technica notes, the carrier recently replaced its Selects program with the Verizon Custom Experience Plus and Custom Experience programs. And that's all well and good, except users have been receiving emails to tell them that they'd been automatically enrolled.

In the email, Verizon stated that they will be included in the programs, which means their data will be collected, even if they previously opted out of participating in Selects. Custom Experience only collects browsing and app usage history, while the Plus version also collects location information and data about the numbers that users call and call them. 

In its FAQ page, Verizon said it doesn't sell user information, but it shares them with the service providers that work with them. "These service providers are required to use the information only for the purposes Verizon defines and not for their own or others' marketing or advertising purposes," the company wrote. The carrier also wrote that it keeps browsing information for no more than 6 months. It keeps location and phone number information for approximately one year. 

To remove themselves from the program, users will have to opt out again. While we're sure a lot of subscribers wouldn't appreciate being enrolled into marketing programs they previously chose not to participate in, it's at least easy to unsubscribe. They can go to their Verizon account's privacy preferences page or "My Verizon" in their mobile app and head to "Manage Settings" or "Manage Privacy Settings" to toggle off both programs. 

Apple Music's recently announced Voice Plan will launch alongside iOS 15.2, according to the patch notes the company shared for the update's release candidate. The changelog was first spotted by MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci. When Apple first announced the more affordable tier at its fall Mac event in October, the company said it would become available "later this fall" in 17 countries, including the US, UK and Canada.

The plan will offer access to Apple Music's entire song catalog for $5 per month, provided you're willing to rely on Siri for control. You can play specific tracks and playlists, as well as complete albums on your Apple devices. What the tier doesn't offer is access to the Apple Music interface.

We've reached out to Apple to confirm it plans to launch the Voice Plan alongside iOS 15.2. The update will add a handful of other new features, including a toggle that allows iPhone 13 Pro owners to turn on and off the camera's included macro mode. Based on the timing of the release candidate, Apple is likely to push out iOS 15.2 soon.

Do you play enough mobile games that your phone gets hot to the touch? Probably not, but Razer has you covered regardless. According to iMore, Razer has released a $60 Phone Cooler Chroma that promises to keep your handset cool. There's a version with a clamp for Android phones and older iPhones, but the star of the show is the MagSafe model — you won't completely sully the design of your iPhone 12 or 13.

This being a Razer accessory, you can expect the seemingly obligatory RGB lighting (controlled through Bluetooth) as well as a high-powered seven-blade fan that remains quiet at about 30dB. Be prepared to stay near power outlets, though, as you'll need to plug in a USB-C charger whether or not you're using MagSafe.

The Phone Cooler Chroma is available now. The question, of course, is whether or not you'll benefit from it in the first place. Modern phones do get warm and can throttle performance under sustained heavy loads, but it's not clear how much cooler your phone will get when the fan sits outside of your handset. There's also the simple matter of necessity. Do you really want a wired fan just for a performance bump in Genshin Impact or PUBG Mobile? This might not be completely far-fetched, though — gaming phones with elaborate cooling have an audience in countries like China, and Razer's fan makes that overkill available to a wider audience.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is set to go on a test run for his future trip around the Moon. He's set to spend 12 days on the International Space Station alongside his assistant, Yozo Hirano, who will document the trip.

Along with cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, the pair will travel to the ISS on a Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft operated by Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. The launch is scheduled for 2:38AM ET on December 8th.

Maezawa has been training for the trip for 100 days. His stay on the ISS is another indication that civilian trips to the space station are becoming more commonplace. According to Agence France-Presse, he and his assistant will be the first space tourists to visit the ISS in more than a decade, though Roscosmos took a film director and actor there in October to shoot a feature film in space for the first time.

The billionaire announced in March that he was looking for eight other people to join him on his week-long lunar trip, which is tentatively set for 2023. All going well, he and his crewmates will become SpaceX's first lunar tourists. Mazewa, who bought out all of the seats on the flight, has become well-known for giveaways. In early 2019, he promised to give away over $900,000 to people who retweeted him. That led to him shattering Twitter's retweet record via his excellent handle, @yousuck2020.

Twitter is testing a feature that allows people to append one-time content warnings to images and videos they share through the platform. The company announced the test on Tuesday, noting it’s available to “some of you.” If you have access to the feature, you’ll see a new flag icon in the image editing interface, which you can access by tapping on the three dots icon that appears at the bottom right of a photo when you add one to a tweet. In its current iteration, you can add warnings for nudity, violence and otherwise sensitive content.

“The tweet author flagged this tweet as showing sensitive content,” says the warning Twitter appends to an image when you tell the app you’re sharing something sensitive. We’ve reached out to Twitter to see if the company will share more information about the feature. The test comes one week after the company banned the sharing of private images and videos without consent. This latest feature should help Twitter users protect their followers from accidentally exposing themselves to content that might be upsetting or otherwise difficult to watch.

Scuf Gaming is finally diving into PS5 controllers, and its first offerings might be noteworthy if you thrive on titles like Call of Duty. The Corsair brand has launched its first PS5 gamepad line, Reflex, with a variant specifically tuned for first-person shooters. The appropriately named Reflex FPS adds instant bumpers and triggers, includes grippier surfaces and even ditches haptic feedback — in theory, you'll a lighter control that won't disrupt your aim.

The FPS, the regular Reflex and the Reflex Pro all have four remappable paddles, a profile switch, removable faceplates and interchangeable thumbsticks. The Pro adds the improved grip of the FPS while preserving the adaptive triggers you might need for some PS5 titles.

Scuf's pricing shows these controllers are meant for enthusiasts and competitive players. The base Reflex is available now for $200, while the Reflex Pro and Reflex FPS respectively sell for $230 and $260. That's difficult to rationalize if you just want an alternative to the official DualSense pad, but might be justifiable if you're determined to emerge triumphant in a battle royale.

Instagram makes it trivial for teens as young as 13 to find and buy drugs like MDMA and Xanax, according to a newly published report from the Tech Transparency Project. The organization recently conducted an investigation where it created a series of fake accounts to test the safeguards Instagram has in place to protect young people from potentially deadly pharmaceuticals.

While hashtags like #mdma are banned on the platform, TTP found it was easy to skirt those restrictions with an account tied to a minor. Using MDMA as an example, the organization found it could employ terms like “mdmamolly” to find people who were selling the substance. In fact, the app’s search algorithm made it easy to find those hashtags, with its autocomplete feature pointing researchers in the right direction.

To make matters worse, once someone follows even just one account belonging to an alleged drug dealer, Instagram’s recommendation algorithm will suggest the user follow similar profiles. Despite Instagram's Community Guidelines prohibiting “buying or selling non-medical or pharmaceutical drugs,” TTP found many drug dealers operate openly on the platform.

Separately, TTP says Instagram did not take decisive action against the content it found on the platform. The organization claims it submitted 50 posts to the company for review. Of those, Instagram said 36 (or 72 percent) did not violate its Community Guidelines, despite what TTP says were “clear signs” of drug dealing activity. At the time of publishing, the company had only banned one account flagged by TTP. However, when the organization went to check on that profile, it was still up on Instagram along with all of its violating content.

“We prohibit drug sales on Instagram. We removed 1.8 million pieces of content related to drug sales in the last quarter alone, and due to our improving detection technology, the prevalence of such content is about 0.05 percent of content viewed, or about 5 views per every 10,000,” Stephanie Otway, a spokesperson for Meta, told Engadget. “We’ll continue to improve in this area in our ongoing efforts to keep Instagram safe, particularly for our youngest community members.”

The report comes just one day before Adam Mosseri is slated to testify to the Senate about Instagram’s impact on young users. The platform has faced increasing scrutiny in recent weeks following testimony from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. According to Haugen, Meta, then Facebook, knew from its own internal research Instagram was harmful to many teens and yet the company disregarded those warnings. TTP’s findings are likely to inform some of the questions the consumer protection subcommittee asks Mosseri on Wednesday.

Lending apps have shaken up Kenya’s financial landscape, but they’ve largely gone unregulated — until now. TechCrunchreports President Kenyatta has signed an amended law that gives the country’s Central Bank the power to license and regulate digital lenders. Companies have six months to apply for a license.

Lenders will also have to honor existing consumer and data protection laws. Firms will have to maintain the confidentiality of customer info. They’ll need to disclose pricing, the consequences of defaulting on loans, and outline debt recovery.

Mobile lending has thrived in Kenya and other countries where many residents don’t have bank accounts and can’t take advantage of conventional financing. However, some services have been accused of abusing their audiences with predatory interest rates. While the updated law isn’t guaranteed to end shady practices, it might discourage those lenders and improve trust for would-be customers.

On Tuesday, Google disclosed it recently disrupted a massive network of computers infected by Glupteba. The company estimates the malware has infected approximately one million Windows PCs globally, which would make it one of the largest known botnets to date.

A botnet is a network of computers or internet-connected devices all infected by malware that is under the control of a single party. In this case, Google traced Glupteba to at least two individuals based out of Russia. The company is suing them in hopes it will “set a precedent, create legal and liability risks for the botnet operators, and help deter future activity.”

At times, the company says it saw the network grow by about 1,000 devices per day. The malware that adds a computer to the Glupteba botnet is usually found hidden on sketchy websites that offer free software. According to Google, Glupteba’s operators used the malware to steal personal data, mine cryptocurrencies and funnel other internet traffic through the infected machines.

Per The Washington Post, the hackers also used some of Google’s own services to distribute the malware. The company suspended more than 1,000 accounts that had been used to spread Glupteba.

“We don’t just plug security holes, we work to eliminate entire classes of threats for consumers and businesses whose work depends on the Internet,” the company said. “We have teams of analysts and security experts who are dedicated to identifying and stopping issues like DDoS, phishing campaigns, zero-day vulnerabilities, and hacking against Google, our products, and our users.”

Google coordinated with internet infrastructure providers to disrupt the botnet, but warns it has so far only succeeded in stopping it temporarily. Glupteba uses blockchain technology as a failsafe against a complete shutdown. When it doesn’t hear from its owners, the software is programmed to automatically use data encoded on the Bitcoin blockchain for instructions on how to reconnect.

“Unfortunately, Glupteba’s use of blockchain technology as a resiliency mechanism is notable here and is becoming a more common practice among cyber crime organizations,” Google said. “The decentralized nature of blockchain allows the botnet to recover more quickly from disruptions, making them that much harder to shutdown.” The company says it’s working with its partners to make the internet more resilient to such attacks.

Apple will fund and distribute a long-in-the-works movie about embattled Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Bad Blood will star Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, while Adam McKay will write and direct. Both are producers on the project, which is a coproduction between Apple Studios and Legendary.

The movie, which is based on the book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start Up by former Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, has been in development since at least 2016, as Deadline notes. The film will depict the rise and fall of Holmes and her company.

Hype around the blood-testing startup led to Holmes becoming the youngest self-made billionaire. Accusations and charges of fraud led to her stepping down as CEO in 2018 and the company liquidating later that year. Holmes is currently on trial for fraud.

Bad Blood is far from the only film and TV project about Theranos and Holmes. Hulu greenlit a miniseries in 2019 with Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon pencilled in to play Holmes. She dropped out earlier this year, and was replaced by Amanda Seyfried. An HBO documentary about the Theranos saga premiered in 2019.

Meanwhile, Lawrence and McKay recently worked together on the Netflix film Don't Look Up, which hits theaters this weekend and will be available to stream on December 24th. It's a satire about two astronomers (played by Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) who try to warn humanity about a catastrophic comet that's set to collide with Earth.