YouTube’s child protection mechanism is breaking down, according to some of the company’s volunteer watchdogs.There’s a constant anxiety that those seeking to abuse or groom young children will use social media to reach them – and YouTube is aware of the problem. The video-sharing site has a special network of volunteers, called Trusted Flaggers, who help identify worrisome posts and comments on the network.But now members of YouTube’s Trusted Flagger programme have told BBC Trending that the company has a huge backlog of reports, some months old, and that the company responds to only a small fraction of complaints from the public about child endangerment and suspected child grooming.One volunteer says that he made more than 9,000 reports in December 2016 – and that none have been processed by the company.

When news of the HBO hack first surfaced earlier this week, much of the noise surrounded the leak of the script of the upcoming episode of “Game of Thrones.”But two new stories detail just how potentially consequential the large-scale hack really could be. Tatiana Siegel, a senior film writer at the entertainment outlet, reports that the hackers obtained “multiple points of entry” into the company’s data, whoch would seem to show a high level of sophistication, and have yet to release a ransom note, making the intention of the hack unclear.

Apple may be planning to launch an updated version of the iPhone SE with a faster chip early next year, according to at least one rumor. Apple upgraded the storage options for the current iPhone SE earlier this year, but the processor and other specs remained the same.Sony A6500If the current rumor comes to fruition, the iPhone SE would see a speed boost by switching from the A9 chip used in the iPhone 6s from late 2015 to the A10 chip used in the iPhone 7 from late 2016.Aside from the chip upgrade, it’s not totally clear if anything else will change about the smaller iPhone model.

A Massachusetts woman convicted of involuntary manslaughter because of text messages that cajoled her 18-year-old friend to commit suicide was sentenced Thursday to serve 15 months in jail.Mochelle Carter, now 20, faced a maximum 20-year prison term. Her unusual prosecution was closely watched, and it occurred in a state that has no law forbidding people from encouraging suicide. But the authorities—including a Bristol County judge—concluded that in 2014 Carter sent Conrad Roy text messages that wantonly and recklessly caused him to poison himself in a car with carbon monoxide. She was 17 years old at the time.

Emailing has held on to the top spot as the most common internet activity in Britain, despite the continued rise of social media, a survey has found.Some 82% of adults say they most often use the web for email, the Office for National Statistics reported – a rise of three percentage points since 2016.Finding information on goods and services came second, at 71%, followed by social networking at 66%.Internet use on mobile devices also continues to rise, the ONS said.The findings are part of an annual survey of internet habits, covering more than 2,500 respondents across Great Britain, whoch found people were using the internet more for a range of everyday activities.

A 32-year-old Seattle man is behind bars while awaiting a federal hacking trial for launching a DDoS attack. He is being held without bail on allegations that he attacked a US-based legal services website to force it to remove a link to a case citation about his past criminal conduct. The authorities also say the suspect launched distributed denial of service attacks on various overseas media outlets for not removing stories about his credit-card scam and other crimes.The FBI says that the day after a DDoS attack in January, 2015, the suspect sent an e-mail to Leagle.com pretending to be the hacking group Anonymous. The e-mail explained that the DDoS attack was launched because the defendant, Kamyar Jahanrakhshan, ”is being unjustly victimised by you” for not abiding by his numerous requests to remove the link and even pay $100 in cash to get the job done.