Viber

The breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldova on Sunday staged parliamentary elections for the seventh Supreme Council (local parliament) since 1992, in which only a minority of voters cast ballots.

"Disclosure of personal data, recording sensitive information, or storing people's profiles on unauthorized servers are some of the risks that go hand in hand with the use of video-conferencing tools," says Skopje-based cybersecurity practitioner Daniel Trenchov.

In Serbia, it noted, agencies set up to fight cybercrime switched to focusing on people accused of causing panic and spreading disinformation on social networks and in Viber groups.

Some crime activities have decreased as a result of the pandemic, the report points out. Migration, for example, dropped significantly towards the end of March, it says.

Montenegrin policemen on the streets in Podgorica. Photo:BIRN/Samir Kajosevic

"As an official, he is in charge of publishing information on COVID-19 patients through the IDO system, which he forwarded via Viber to other persons who, although his colleagues, are not authorized to dispose of this information," the Prosecution said in a press release.

Kosovo Police arrested two person on Wednesday suspected to be the creators of the Radar group on Viber, used by thousands of citizens to avoid the police controls and speeding fines across the country.

A group of more than 7,000 people joined a group over the past months whose members sent updates to each other about the location of the police in real time.

SHARE Foundation said on Tuesday that it has sent letters to 20 companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, asking them to appoint a representative in Serbia to whom all questions related to personal data processing can be addressed.

Only the youngest and oldest Bulgarians do not use mobile services through a smartphone, according to a nationally representative survey of consumer habits and the use of mobile internet. It was conducted by the Market Research Agency "Arbitrage" among 2600 people at the end of last year, ordered by Telenor and announced on Friday by the telecom.

You'd think Facebook would be faster at copying itself. Five years after Facebook Messenger took a cue from WhatsApp and Voxer to launch voice messaging, and four months after TechCrunch reported Instagram  was testing its own walkie-talkie feature, voice messaging is rolling out globally on Instagram Direct today.

The new Intelligence

Romanian and German police and organised crime prosecutors moved on Wednesday in a simultaneous operation to search scores of locations in both countries, to dismantle a refugee trafficking network whose hub was in Timisoara, western Romania.