France

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France Seeks Removal of 'Wish' From App Stores, Search Engines

Andrew Orr ·

The French administration wants app stores and search engines to remove Wish after an investigation of its products. They found that many of the products listed in Wish don’t meet European standards.

When Wish is notified that it is selling a dangerous good, those products are removed from the marketplace within 24 hours as expected. And yet, “in most cases, those products remain available under a different name, and sometimes even from the same seller. The company doesn’t keep any log related to transactions of non-compliant and dangerous products,” France’s Ministry of the Economy says in its statement.

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France Labels Electronics With Repairability Scores

Andrew Orr ·

France has become the first country to label electronics with a score of how repairable they are.

This means MEPs have called on the European Commission to grant consumers a ‘right to repair’ by making repairs more attractive, systematic and cost effective, whether by extending warranties, providing warranties for replaced parts, or better access to repair and maintenance information.

I’m curious to see what kind of scores Apple products receive. Zero? One?

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France Claims Apple is Undermining its COVID App Efforts

Andrew Orr ·

On Tuesday the French government accused Apple of undermining its efforts with its contact tracing app “StopCovid.”

Apple’s iPhones normally block access to Bluetooth unless the user is actively running an app. French officials want Apple to change the settings to let their app access Bluetooth in the background, so it is always on. So far, they say, Apple has refused.

O, the French minister, said he could not explain the reasoning behind Apple’s decision on Bluetooth. “We consider that oversight of the healthcare system, fighting the coronavirus, is a matter for governments and not necessarily for big American companies,” he said.

As we pointed out on our Daily Observations podcast, most people aren’t going to care about the privacy aspects of these apps. But they will care about battery life, and apps like these constantly using Bluetooth in the background will undoubtedly be a factor, Bluetooth Low Energy or not.

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French Police Defeat Retadup Botnet Infecting 850,000 Computers

Andrew Orr ·

French police have defeated a botnet that infected over 850,000 computers. It was created with the Retadup malware. With the help of a web host, they cloned the command & control server and used it to disinfect the zombie computers.

“The malware authors were mostly distributing cryptocurrency miners, making for a very good passive income,” the security company said. “But if they realized that we were about to take down Retadup in its entirety, they might’ve pushed ransomware to hundreds of thousands of computers while trying to milk their malware for some last profits.”

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Emmanuel Macron Says its Crazy That Apple Gets Tax Haven

Andrew Orr ·

French President Emmanuel Macron says it’s crazy that companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google get a “permanent tax haven status.”

The reference to ‘tax haven status’ relates to practices used by Apple and others to funnel profits on European sales through Ireland, and then to claim large deductions for R&D costs incurred in the US. There have also been accusations that Apple assigns most of its European profits to a subsidiary which exists only on paper and which pays no taxes anywhere.