News

A recently published study showed just how easy it is for hackers and fraudsters to take control of your phone number, potentially leading to thousands of dollars in fraud — that’s your money on the line. The practice of SIM swapping is becoming more common, and despite carriers putting safeguards in place, it’s scary how quickly the researchers were able to take over a phone number. The SIM card inside…

FOR MARRIED COUPLES, combining finances is a smart way to streamline expenses. But at tax time, couples face a tricky question: File jointly or separately? Knowing which status to choose – married filing jointly or married filing separately – isn’t always cut and dry. However, figuring out which way to go can result in many tax benefits. In most cases, married couples should file their taxes jointly in order to…

In your ongoing quest to discover where a nugget comes from on a chicken, you’ll probably need to taste the chicken’s nuggets a few times. The research phase of the project is certainly difficult, but you have to do what you have to do (with dipping sauces). To help you on your quest, McDonald’s and Uber Eats are offering a free 10-piece order of Chicken McNuggets a few times over…

Several Amazon employees say they’ve been threatened with termination for talking publicly about their climate change campaign. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an activist group within Amazon that started in late 2018, said in a statement Thursday that four of its members were targeted by the human resources and legal departments at Amazon for speaking out publicly, including to the press. In two cases, employees received followup emails threatening firings…

As we prepare to embark on a new decade, any fans of Fox programming still holding onto their cable subscription could soon be SOL. Hundreds of mid-range and local cable providers with millions of customers between them are locked in 2020 contract negotiations with Fox, and the broadcasting company’s allegedly holding their feet to the fire with price hikes in the double digits and consumer-targeted propaganda campaigns. That so many…

The launch of Disney+ thus far has been something of a mixed bag. On one hand, Disney was able to get 10 million users to sign up for its fledgling service, an impressive figure no matter how you look at it. On the other hand, the service’s debut was not without its share of frustrations as users experienced a range of technical difficulties when it came to actually accessing Disney’s…

The way Alex Zhu — who today heads up the video app TikTok that’s taken the teen and 20-something demographics by storm — tells the service’s origin story, it involves a train ride and a eureka moment. Back in 2014, Alex had co-founded Musical.ly, which trod similar ground as TikTok does today with the short-burst videos that users create in which they do everything from lip-syncing songs to dancing, showing…

Battery power is one of those things that’s always at a premium, especially when you’re traveling and need to use one of the precious few power outlets at the airport to keep your device charged. This week, the LA County District Attorney’s office put out a warning to remind everyone of one way you shouldn’t keep that device charged: a public USB port. We warned people about using public USB…

It’s official. Amazon is opening its own grocery store, separate from the Whole Foods banner it acquired two years ago. The tech giant will open a supermarket in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles next year. The announcement was made after Amazon posted job openings on its website. The news was first reported by CNET. The store will allow Amazon to carry products such as Coca-Cola that are banned…

For years, the traditional 401(k) plan has been the most popular workplace retirement account. However, there’s a new alternative that’s been growing steadily in the past decade: the Roth 401(k). According to data from global advisory, broking, and solutions company Willis Towers Watson, 70% of employers who have a 401(k) plan offered a Roth version in 2018, up from just 46% in 2012. If your employer is one of them,…

The news: Popular health websites are sharing private, personal medical data with big tech companies, according to an investigation by the Financial Times. The data, including medical diagnoses, symptoms, prescriptions, and menstrual and fertility information, are being sold to companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Oracle and smaller data brokers and advertising technology firms, like Scorecard and OpenX. The investigation: The FT analyzed 100 health websites, including WebMD, Healthline, health…

Apple’s new standalone app, called Research, is an effort to collect information on three common aspects of people’s health. We’re gonna science this: As the name suggests, the app is meant to collect user data and send it to research partnerships that Apple has set up—three of them, each of which will focus on a separate issue. The first, on women’s health, links the company with Harvard’s public health school…