Chinese Phones in Africa Found with Pre-installed Malware, Huawei Loses Patent Case in UK, and Apple Wins Case to Block Fortnite

Africa

Tecno phones with malware sold in Africa

The Tecno W2 smartphone was found to contain malware that signed users up for subscriptions without their knowledge, it has been reported. Upstream, an anti-fraud firm, found the malware on 53,000 phones in Ghana, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, and Cameroon.

Africa Prize for Engineering selects four finalists

The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation has chosen four finalists for the 2020 edition of the award. The finalists are Ghana’s BACE API, Nigeria’s Farmz2U, and Uganda’s Remot and PapsAI. The finalists will pitch their products to a live audience in a bid to win the £25,000 prize.

Nokwary Technologies wins Ecobank Fintech Challenge

Nokwary Technologies, a start-up that uses AI to promote financial inclusion, emerged as the overall winner of Ecobank’s Fintech Challenge. They won the ultimate $10,000 prize while Ukheshe Payments and Growth Factor Technologies came second and third respectively.

Europe

Tech firms threaten to leave Belarus over outages

International tech firms operating in Belarus have threatened to leave the country over violent crackdowns on protestors in Minsk. Protestors criticising the electoral outcome have suffered incarceration. Internet outages have also become rampant.

Huawei and ZTE lose patent appeal in UK

UK’s Supreme Court has dismissed appeals by Huawei and ZTE over mobile data patent charges against Unwired Planet and Conversant Wireless. The two companies license patents in the UK and had accused the two Chinese firms of intellectual property infringement.

College group in Leeds suffer cyber-attack

Luminate Education Group (LEG) said it had suffered a cyber-attack that caused “operation disruption” to its IT infrastructure. The attack meant some students at Leeds City College could not access their exam results. Leeds City College and University Centre Leeds were all affected.

The Americas

Apple can block Fortnite, not Unreal Engine

A US judge has declared that Apple can block Epic’s video game, Fortnite. Epic Games had sought relief in a court after Apple blocked its game for breaching App Store rules. However, Apple were denied the power to block Epic’s graphics tool, Unreal Engine, which was used by third-parties.

TikTok to launch legal action over US ban

TikTok has threatened legal action against its ban in the United States. President Trump has banned transactions with ByteDance, publishers of TikTok, from the middle of September over national security fears. TikTok said attempts to follow due process has failed.

Uber to expand to Quebec

Uber Technologies Inc. has revealed plans to expand to Quebec this fall. This comes at a time when Quebec is looking to reform its taxi bill and allow ride-hailing apps to operate in the Canadian province.

Asia

New Zealand stock exchange suffers cyber-attack

New Zealand’s stock exchange suffered cyber-attacks over two consecutive days. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack knocked the stock exchange offline in the process, forcing the exchange to stop trading in cash markets.

Facebook blocks access to group criticising Thai monarch

Facebook has blocked Thai access to a million-member group criticising Thailand’s monarchy. The Thai government had threatened legal action against Facebook because criticising the monarchy is illegal in Thailand. Facebook is considering legal action of its own.

Chinese regulators suspend DiDi

Local authorities have suspended DiDi’s new ride-hailing service due to a lack of operating license. DiDi, which is China’s largest ride-hailing service, launched a new service called Huaxiaozhu that targeted younger riders.