The Federal Communications Commission has adopted a new set of rules aimed at providing privacy and financial support to people experiencing domestic violence who share a phone plan with their abuser, spotlighting often-overlooked technology barriers for people trying to escape dangerous relationships and living situations.

The agency’s rules, unanimously adopted last week, will require phone carriers to separate survivors’ lines within two business days of a request, waive fees associated with such requests, and block records of communication with help hotlines on account logs. It also creates a path for survivors to receive low-cost phone service through an FCC-administered program for a transitional period of up to six months.

India McKinney, director of federal affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Tech Brew that her organization, along with a few others, flagged the amount of metadata that family-plan account holders are privy to in a letter to members of Congress. She noted that account owners receive reports on each number associated with the account including calls or texts, as well as details like the duration of calls, dates, and timestamps.

“In the hands of an abuser, that’s a lot of information,” McKinney said. She pointed out that carriers typically charge early-termination fees of up to $300 for line-separation requests—an amount survivors may struggle to pay, especially if the abuser controls the household’s money. It’s also not often practical or advisable for people to simply get a new number, as many important things are often linked to an individual’s existing phone number, she said.

The letter ultimately got through to lawmakers, McKinney said.

Keep reading here.—KG

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Taking a page from restaurants of the early-Covid era, hackers are trying out QR codes, frustrating IT pros by sneaking poisoned pixel squares past filters and into inboxes.

A report from the cybersecurity company Reliaquest discovered a 51% increase in QR-code attacks in September, compared to the cumulative number from January to August.

“This spike is at least partially attributable to the increasing prevalence of smartphones having built-in QR code scanners or free scanning apps; users are often scanning codes without even a thought about their legitimacy,” a Reliaquest threat researcher wrote on Nov. 9.

Early in November, Anthony Oren, CEO of the IT-support service Nero Consulting, had noticed a set of malicious emails sneaking past filters because the messages were images: Namely, QR codes. After going to his usual forums on Reddit and Spiceworks, Oren saw his peers had a similar problem with the 2D squares.

Admins have a difficult enough time blocking malicious emails and getting employees not to click through them. The QR code adds an extra layer of sneakiness for phishers and an extra challenge for IT professionals in charge of work email.

“We quickly realized there’s really no defense for it,” said Oren, unless a company wants to go with a likely impractical option of blocking all images.

Keep reading on IT Brew.—BH

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How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

At a high level, I think my job is to work with our team to take something with a ton of complexity and make it as simple and elegant for our customer as possible. We build software that solves for a ton of financial, regulatory, legal, and technical complexity to provide simple, elegant, and unprecedented access to real estate, venture capital, and private credit investments that were previously only available to wealthy and institutional investors. Figuring out how to break down something that’s tremendously complex, translate it into software, and make it appear intuitive and simple for the customer is one of the primary ways we create value as a company.

What’s the most compelling tech project you’ve worked on, and why?

It may seem shameless or self-serving, but undoubtedly, it’s Fundrise. To see how we’ve given life to our idea of building a better financial system for the individual and how much our team and systems have evolved to realize that original vision is immensely rewarding. We started with a dilapidated, smelly, abandoned dollar store on H Street in DC and now have billions of dollars deployed in real estate and credit, as well as in some of the most promising and valuable private tech companies in the world.

Keep reading here.

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