Smartphone messenger application Line, which has hundreds of millions of users across Asia, yesterday urged people to change their passwords as Japanese police investigated unauthorized access involving hundreds of accounts.
At least 303 such cases were confirmed between late May and Saturday last week, including three that involved cash trades resulting in financial losses, a Line spokesman told reporters, without providing further details.
“We are cooperating with police in investigating the cases and we are calling for users to change passwords,” the spokesman said.
The accounts were accessed “presumably after shared passwords with other online services were leaked somewhere else,” he said, adding that to the company’s knowledge, all of the breaches occurred in Japan.
A police spokesman said the case was under investigation.
Set up in 2011, Line now has more than 400 million users, mainly in Japan and Asia, and is growing fast.
The service lets users make free calls, send instant messages and post photos or short videos, combining attributes from Facebook, Skype and messaging application WhatsApp.
Line has forged heavyweight partnerships with soccer clubs FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, brands such as Coca-Cola and tennis star Rafael Nadal.
FC Barcelona, for instance, has a home page on the app which has millions of “friends.”
One of Line’s main selling points is its set of “stickers” — funny, cartoon-like figures that users can post to friends.
Dwango, the operator of the high-profile Niconico video sharing forum, reported last week more than 200,000 accounts had been hacked.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
RSS