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Teens s*xtorted but promising scam signs, Saudi owns your Pokémon Go data and Google ends affiliate hijacking

Plus: I regret to inform you about another cool Raspberry Pi use case

Author

Cam Wilson
March 13, 2025

Issue 2290 - Thursday 13 March 2025

If you’re reading this as someone who isn’t already a paying subscriber to the Sizzle, you know the drill: sign up for a subscription, it’s crazy good value. (You’re pretty much making money given the savings from the deals down below). OK, enjoy!

In Today’s Issue

  • Huge number of teens sexually extorted but there’s promising signs in the war on scams

  • Played Pokémon Go? Saudi Arabia almost certainly owns all your location data now

  • Google ends affiliate hijacking Chrome extensions as UK says mobile browser market is ‘not working well’

  • I regret to inform you about another cool Raspberry Pi use case

The News

Huge number of teens sexually extorted but there’s promising signs in the war on scams

Just over one in ten Australian teens have been sexually extorted online, and 40% of those cases involve deepfake content (Canberra Times). That’s according to an academic who published a national survey last month that is frankly eye-opening reading (Australian Institute of Criminology). Coincidentally, I just spoke with the Australian arm of ICMEC who’ve been researching the finances behind these “nudify” apps that it says are being propped up by an economy of people paying for access to the apps or to have non-consensual images made of people on their behalf (Crikey, $).

I think it’s hard to actually comprehend but I really encourage you to think about it: if it’s statistically likely that each classroom has one kid who’s been sextorted, what’s that doing to a whole generation? Zooming out, what is the impact on our collective minds that we’re bombarded with texts, emails, calls, ads that are trying to scam us? It can’t be good. I’m pleased to share that there are some early, promising results responding to this stuff. The government says that scam losses have fallen by a quarter in 2024 (Communications Minister). This data captures the period before the government’s new scam framework law and the new anti-scam measures that keep getting rolled out: Telstra is going to start flagging potential scams on caller ID (EFTM) and the government is going to let regulators investigate banks that receiving scam funds (Information Age). It’s not often that there is good news to share, but it seems like things might be improving.

Played Pokémon Go? Saudi Arabia almost certainly owns all your location data now

Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs is selling its video games arm to a Saudi-owned company (The Guardian). The obvious question that follows is: what the hell is going to happen to all the location data from hundreds of millions of users that was captured by the app and is now owned by a non-democratic state with a history of allegedly using data to torture dissidents (The New Arab)? The answer so far: plenty of words but no real response (404 Media, $). Niantic, for what it’s worth, will now focus on an arm of its company that is commercialising an AI model that it claims can navigate the world that was trained by — you guessed it — player data from games like Pokémon Go (404 Media, $). Moments like these make personal efforts to protect your privacy and even privacy regulation feel a bit silly. After all, what can you do if a country just buys an enormous trove of data including your own personal information?

Google ends affiliate hijacking Chrome extensions as UK says mobile browser market is ‘not working well’

Google is cracking down on extension like Honey which are hijacking affiliate links without any benefit or user interaction (TechRadar). Flagged by Sizzler Dave, this is seemingly a response to a YouTube video I put in the Sizzle earlier this year that shone a spotlight on Paypal-owned company Honey essentially stealing affiliate revenue by creating an extension that would sub in the company’s own affiliate links in for whatever link the user had actually clicked on. While we’re talking browser stuff, the UK’s competition watchdog said that mobile browser competition is “not working well” because Apple and, to a lesser extent, Google’s policies and preferential treatment for their own browsers (The Verge). It’s nice to hear but the findings have no consequences. Perhaps the UK government is just waiting to see what happens with the DOJ’s recently reiterated demand that Google sells off Chrome (WIRED, $).

Leftovers

  • Exclusive: Adobe slammed for use of AI-Generated images of Indigenous people and artworks (NIT)

  • ‘We’re not embarrassed’: Tesla owners shrug off Musk stigma (AFR, $)

  • NDIA goes to ground on its ongoing Salesforce blowout (InnovationAus, $)

  • Scott Farquhar to succeed Robyn Denholm as Tech Council chair (AFR, $)

  • ‘Just caught a baby wombat’: American influencer suffers backlash after viral video (SMH, $)

  • Amazon, Google and Meta support tripling of nuclear capacity by 2050 (FT, $)

  • Donald Trump Bought a $90,000 Tesla With 37 Recall Notices Against It (WIRED, $)

  • Alibaba Releases AI Model That Reads Emotions to Take On OpenAI (Bloomberg, $)

  • Meta rep flagged 'critiques of tech industry figures' as 'sensitive or controversial content' (Usermag, $)

  • In Memoriam: Mark Klein, AT&T Whistleblower Who Revealed NSA Mass Spying (EFF)

Oh, Also

I regret to inform you about another cool Raspberry Pi use case

I probably don’t need to give you any new excuses to justify buying a Raspberry Pi but I enjoyed this very easy-to-read guide about how to use a Raspberry Pi 4 B+ to build and run a website (Mira Welner). The blogger, who is a ML researcher from the US, says he spent five years fiddling away at it and has put something together that looks simple enough for anyone (maybe even this dullard tech reporter) to follow. Some other cool Raspberry Pi projects I saw while poking around: a nocturnal wildlife camera (RS-Online), a possessed portrait (Hackster) and a fireplace (Instructables).

WARNING: RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO BUY A RASPBERRY PI OR, WORSE YET, ANOTHER RASPBERRY PI. IF YOU DO, YOU MUST SEND ME $5 AS PENANCE.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.

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