Peter Thiel is an FBI informant, Google busted hosting malware ads again, ACMA fines Ticketek for spamming

Peter Thiel is an FBI informant according to Business Insider. Thiel has an informant number and passed on information about "foreign contacts and Silicon Valley intrigue" to "Johnathan Buma, a Los Angeles-based FBI agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign-influence campaigns".

Arstechnica noticed that Google is/was displaying an ad for the KeePass password manager that looks legit, even with a legit looking URL (punycode strikes again!), from a verified advertiser, but is actually malware. They call bullshit on Google's ad verification process if an ad this blatant makes it through their system. Dunno what end users can do about this kinda thing except using an ad-blocker and/or using a search engine that doesn't have ads.

ACMA fined Ticketek $515,040 SMS and email spam. They apparently "mischaracterised some emails as being non-commercial because they contained event information for ticket holders and therefore [were incorrectly] considered them exempt from spam rules", but ACMA says that "even if the purpose of a message is to provide factual information to customers, if it also includes marketing content, or links to marketing content, it can only be sent with consent".

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