Australia's competition watchdog on Friday recommended tighter controls on the use of personal data and measures to ease Facebook and Google's dominance of online advertising among a slew of measures to better police the internet giants.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's cell phones were allegedly targeted by a group of hackers who are also accused of breaching the devices of the investigators in a massive corruption probe, the justice ministry said Thursday.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung announced Thursday it will release its cutting-edge foldable smartphone in September, despite a trade dispute between Seoul and Tokyo which analysts say will affect delivery.

U.S. regulators on Wednesday slapped a record $5 billion fine on Facebook for privacy violations in a wide-ranging settlement that calls for revamping privacy controls and oversight at the social network.

Internet giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon have disrupted markets and culture in a lucrative rise to power that have regulators launching probes, imposing fines and even threatening to break the companies up.

Microsoft on Monday announced a $1 billion investment in an OpenAI ethical artificial intelligence project backed by Tesla's Elon Musk and Amazon.

The Czech unit of telecoms giant Huawei secretly collected personal data of customers, officials and business partners, Czech public radio reported Monday, fanning concerns about security risks linked to the Chinese group.

An Israeli spyware firm thought to have hacked WhatsApp in the past has told clients it can scoop user data from the world's top social media, the Financial Times reported Friday.

Poland and Lithuania said Thursday they were looking into the potential security risks of using a Russian-made face-editing app that has triggered a viral social media trend where users post "aged" selfies.

Instagram started hiding "likes" on its platform in Australia, Brazil and several other major markets Thursday, saying it wanted to ease pressure on users, following criticism about its impacts on mental health.

The Facebook-owned social media giant's trial changes mean users in the six countries will no longer be able to see the number of likes other people's posts receive.