Scammers fake copyright claims to extort money from Insta influencers, Grindr to pay £26m over HIV data

Instagram creators say they have lost thousands of pounds after their accounts were suspended or taken down due to fake copyright claims. Extorters have filed bogus claims to the Meta-owned social media platform, then asked for ransoms to withdraw them – knowing repeated claims can lead to account bans. One Instagram user, who has 1.5 million followers, told the BBC he paid a scammer $50 (£37) to get his account back, claiming Meta’s appeal process would take weeks, which had previously cost him thousands in lost income. “We understand this can be frustrating for those impacted, and our systems are designed to protect people from this happening in the first place,” a Meta spokesperson said. BBC

The chair of the UK government’s “moonshot” science and technology research unit has been forced to stand down after taking a job with the San Francisco AI firm Anthropic, in a move senior MPs called a “clear conflict of interest”. Matt Clifford announced last week that he was taking a full-time job working for the company behind the Claude chatbot, “leading its engagement” with governments outside the US – including the UK. But he retained his leadership at the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), which funds frontier science and tech projects. The Guardian 

Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the gay hookup app shared users’ personal information, including HIV status, with third parties, the BBC reports. Mashable first reported that Grindr did this in 2018, based on an initial investigation from BuzzFeed News. Soon after that report was published, Grindr told Axios it would stop sharing HIV status with third parties. In April 2024, UK law firm Austen Hays sued Grindr on behalf of thousands of UK users, claiming that the app breached the country’s privacy laws by sharing sensitive information with third-party vendors prior to 2020. In April 2025, Austen Hays served Grindr’s U.S. offices. By June 2025, over 11,000 claimants signed up, according to the firm. Mashable

Apple is about to unveil its first ever foldable iPhone – but there’s a catch. The device, rumoured to be known as the iPhone Ultra, is rumoured to feature a display on the outside but then can be folded out like a book, to make the screen twice the size. After years of speculation and months of rumours, the company is finally ready to show off the phone at its “Surprise and Shine” event, which will be held on Wednesday, 9 September. It will also introduce a new iPhone 18 Pro. Indpendent 

Tech giant Arm is facing a potential shareholder revolt over plans to hand its chief executive an “excessive” bonus of up to $800m (£590m). Shareholder advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis have told investors to vote against a scheme that would reward Rene Haas if he could turn Arm into Britain’s first trillion-dollar company. Mr Haas stands to make up to $800m in shares under a proposed “value creation plan” (VCP). Telegraph

Britain’s state-owned electricity system operator has awarded Palantir a £21mn contract without inviting rival bids, arguing critical grid processes are too reliant on its technology to run a competitive procurement process. The National Energy System Operator (Neso) agreed the new contract with the US tech giant last month, extending a previous agreement with the company that started in March 2023 but had not been previously formally disclosed. One of the areas covered by the contract is getting users connected to the electricity grid, where Neso’s performance was described as “materially below expectations” in a report from a panel of independent experts published last week. FT.com