Molly Russell and Olly Stephens: Families unite to slam online law delays

  • The parents of teenagers Molly Russell and Olly Stephens said they were frustrated by repeated delays to the Online Safety Bill.
  • The two families have warned that more youngsters face the same fate unless the government takes swift action.
  • Ian Russell, Molly’s father, compared the way social media companies currently operate to “putting cars on the road without testing them on crash dummies first”.
  • For more on this story, visit the BBC website.

Twitch says it’s getting better at detecting and blocking younger users

  • Twitch are cracking down on accounts belonging to users under the age of 13 in an effort to protect children on the platform.
  • A Bloomberg report revealed ‘rampant child predation’ on Twitch and found a total of 279,016 children were targeted by alleged predators on the platform.
  • Twitch is going to introduce mandatory phone verification requirements to “potentially vulnerable accounts” before they can start livestreaming and will also prioritise reports involving users under 13.
  • For more on this update, please visit the Verge website.

Russian Cybergangs stole over 50 million passwords this year

  • According to a report by Group-IB, at least 34 Russian speaking cybercrime groups using malware have collectively stolen 50,350,000 account passwords from over 896,000 individual infections in 6 months.
  • Between January and July 2022, stolen credentials were for cryptocurrency wallets, Steam, Roblox, Amazon, and PayPal accounts, as well as payment cards.
  • According to the report, Telegram was the platform used to coordinate the attacks.
  • For more on this story, visit the Bleeping Computer website.

Teacher banned over sexual contact with pupil

  • A “respected” teacher who engaged in sexual contact with a pupil has been banned from the profession for life.
  • The teacher who was jailed for 8 months “had formed a relationship and engaged in sexual conduct with a pupil at the school” between the age of 13-17 which was an “abuse of trust”.
  • The teacher will be placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years after admitting four counts of abuse of a position of trust.
  • For more on this story, please visit the BBC website.