Tag Archive for: Shock

TikTok Shock As Viral Video Hack Freezes Screens—2 Ways To Fix It

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TikTok users are discovering a new and unwanted type of viral video craze over the Easter weekend: a hack that prevents them from scrolling backward or forwards, effectively freezing the app. Here’s what’s happening and how to fix it.

TikTok In The News, Again

TikTok has been in the news recently thanks to the proposed ban using the app for U.S. users unless owners ByteDance divest the U.S. operation. The highest earning app in the world, TikTok’s February revenue was $189 million. With an estimated 1.7 billion users in 2023, it is also one of the most popular largely thanks to the viral videos and crazes it has seen posted over the years.

But there is one viral trend on TikTok that certainly is not very popular among its users. The videos that are part of this craze appear to freeze the ability to scroll the screen in any direction, leaving users with no other option than to restart the app. However, it’s important to note that appearances can be deceiving, and not everything is as it seems at first glance.

MORE FROM FORBESThis Popular Google App Will Stop Working In 3 Days-How To Migrate Your DataBy Davey Winder

The TikTok Screen Freeze Hack

Users have been taking to the internet in droves (1, 2, 3) to complain that posts are appearing that lock their TikTok app down, preventing them from scrolling to the previous or next video. Many seem to think that the videos and images in question somehow freeze the app entirely, in effect bricking it for that session, or are even somehow breaking their phones. The truth, as always, is a lot less exciting albeit nonetheless annoying.

The videos, or rather images that look like videos, all contain some glib comment along the lines of “Sorry, I have to stop you from scrolling,” and, at first and second glance, this does appear to be the case.

If you try to swipe up or down, nothing happens; you’ll likely just get your attention drawn to the “I’ve stopped you scrolling” nonsense instead. What appears to be happening is that people have worked out that if you post an image and tag it with an unfeasibly large number of people,…

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I’m a tech expert still in shock at these ways hackers steal your password

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You’ve probably heard it a million times, right? Keep your passwords strong, unique and under wraps. Don’t go clicking on shady links, and change your passwords like you change your socks. Oh, and let’s not forget about tucking them away in a cozy, encrypted password manager. The advice list is never-ending.

But here’s a kicker. What if you tick all those boxes and your password still ends up in the wrong hands? I know it sounds like we’re going overboard, but it’s a legitimate worry. How can you keep yourself safe from all the password-stealing scams out there and the damage that can potentially come with that?

The truth is, you can never keep yourself 100% safe from anything. But you can try your best. It starts by taking a step back and understanding the ways that your password, emails and usernames could be potentially compromised.

CLICK TO GET KURT’S FREE CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH SECURITY ALERTS, QUICK VIDEO TIPS, TECH REVIEWS AND EASY HOW-TO’S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER

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Illustration of locking up your devices (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

The many ways hackers try to steal your password

Theoretically, there are many ways that hackers can go about stealing your password and other login information, especially when it comes to tricking you into giving it to them. But, all the methods go back to the basics. Here are some of the methods hackers employ to steal passwords from innocent people like you and me.

Password spraying: This isn’t always successful, but attackers may attempt to log in to your accounts by trying random common passwords and seeing if anything hits.

Credential stuffing: Hackers test databases or lists of stolen credentials against multiple accounts to see if there’s a match. If you use the same password across different sites,…

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Why You Should Stop Using Google Chrome After Shock Update

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“Google seems to be hiding,” Chrome rival Brave warned this week, as the trillion-dollar tech giant quietly confirmed a shocking update for 2.6 billion users. “Google is buying time to regroup,” Brave said, “to consolidate its control over web tracking.” If you’re a Chrome user, this nasty new surprise is a genuine reason to quit.

We already know that Chrome harvests much more of your data than other browsers. And now a critical update to stop you being secretly tracked online, an update that was due in just a few months, has been delayed by at least two more years.

Third-party tracking cookies are sneaky little spies on your phones, tablets and computers, following you around, reporting back to their masters—it’s the tech that built up the vast targeted ad industry. But as Firefox developer Mozilla warns, this “ubiquitous surveillance is used in ways that harm individuals and society… The advertising ecosystem is fundamentally broken in its current form.”

You don’t want hidden tracking on your devices. Your browsing and transactions recorded. Your identity “fingerprinted” by vast databases mined by billion-dollar algorithms, shaping how you shop, vote, think. Survey after survey find that “most of us do not want to be spied on online, or receive ads based on tracking and profiling.”

Google is the gorilla in the cage here. Chrome dominates the browser market, with a staggering 60-70% market share. Most of its revenues come not from apps and services, but from selling access to you and your data, targeting you with ads.

Google admits the problem is out of hand. This “proliferation” of harvested user data, it said back in March, has “led to an erosion of trust… 72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or others, and 81% say the potential risks from data collection outweigh the benefits.”

But until this week, Google has been telling us that it’s fixing the problem, delivering its self-styled privacy first web. “Chrome [has] announced its intent to remove support for third-party cookies” by early 2022, the company assured us in March. “We’re…

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Embrace Fans: How One Mystery Modder Has Kept System Shock 2 Playable

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There’s this weird thing in the video game industry in terms of how the industry reacts to fans doing things with their games. On one side, you have publishers that strictly control what fans can do with their games, even going the legal threat route at times. Other publishers are more permissive with game IP and are then shocked at what fans manage to do with their games. Still other publishers proactively create tools within their games to allow fans to create wildly cool productions within the games and then celebrate those fans. And, of course, there are fans manipulating properties such as original soundtracks to create new music as an homage to the original score.

There is a wide spectrum of what fans want to do to express their fandom with video games, in other words, and also a spectrum of ways publishers respond to these dedicated fans. The original Doom, for instance, was created nearly three decades ago, but an active modding community has kept the game relevant by building on that original work. In the case of System Shock 2, however, it turns out the game originally released in 1999 is essentially only playable on modern machines due to the dedication of one single mystery fan.

After developer Looking Glass Studios closed in 2000, the game wound up in ownership limbo. For a time, it languished without updates. Getting it to run on more modern machines increasingly became a massive hassle. Then, in 2012, a fan released an unofficial update that took aim at those issues with almost cyborg-like laser precision. To this day, nobody knows the identity of the fan who released this update.

The mystery savior of System Shock 2 goes by the online handle “Le Corbeau.” In 2012, according to a feature over at Rock Paper Shotgun, they first posted their revolutionary patch to the game, titled “NewDark,” on a French Thief fan forum. Nobody’s entirely sure how this fan pulled off an update of this magnitude, but it likely involved building upon an incomplete version of the game’s source code that leaked in 2010.

The effect of the patch was that people could actually play the game again. Strangely, at no point has Le Corbeau sought any credit for his or her work. Nobody to date knows who this person is. But, because of their dedication and, my assumption, fandom, System Shock 2 is not only still relevant, but now on sale on Steam once more. That’s because Nightdive Studios got the rights to System Shock 2 and promptly inserted Le Corbeau’s patch into a re-release. Far from being upset about this, Le Corbeau has continued to patch the game.

Nightdive even tried to get the modder involved, but to no avail.

Nightdive, having found System Shock 2’s actual source code in Looking Glass founder Paul Neurath’s closet, is now making its own improvements to System Shock 2, as well as a remake of the first System Shock and an all-new System Shock game. Despite all this, the studio—like perplexed but grateful fans—has no idea who Le Corbeau actually is. CEO Stephen Kick told RPS that he’s tried to reach out in hopes of collaborating over the years, but hasn’t had any success yet. “They have done an amazing job, but at some point those efforts will collide with our own as we wish to improve the original title,” said Kick.

If that last bit in some way signals some animosity towards the modder on the part of Nightdive, this story is going to have a massively infuriating ending. Because the fact is that Le Cordeau’s efforts directly kept System Shock 2 relevant and available for fans to enjoy, which in turn kept the market open and ready to accept re-releases of the game and new iterations of it.

Regardless, sure, let game companies claim that fans being fans is some threat to their business if they like, so long as everyone realizes how silly that is.

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