Your commercial news round-up: Telegram, petrol prices, Nike and Sky adverts, cyber-attacks

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From popular messaging app Telegram making changes to its terms of service and privacy policy to petrol prices falling, adverts being banned and cyber-attacks, there’s a bit of everything in this week’s commercial news round-up. Boost your commercial awareness with these weekly articles and head to our Commercial awareness hub, sponsored by Mayer Brown International LLP, for tips and tricks on demonstrating this top skill to your future employers!

• Telegram, a messaging app that lets users access chats from multiple devices, has announced a change to its terms of service and privacy policy that will see it hand over users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities that have search warrants or other valid legal requests. CEO Pavel Durov said the change, which comes after he was charged with enabling criminal activity on the app, “should discourage criminals”. Durov has since denied the charges, which he described as “surprising” and “misguided”, according to the BBC. As well as facing allegations that the app is a source of misinformation and terror-related content (among other things), Telegram was also recently scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that contributed to violence in English cities. Daphne Keller from Stanford University’s Centre for Internet and Society said: “Anything that Telegram employees look at and can recognise with reasonable certainty is illegal, they should be removing entirely.”
   
• The average price for a litre of unleaded petrol has fallen to around £1.35 – the lowest level for three years – with the RAC predicting that prices could fall further “in the next few weeks to reflect the lower wholesale costs retailers are paying when they buy fresh fuel stocks”. The RAC cited lower global oil prices and a stronger pound as reasons for the price drop, while data from the Competition and Markets Authority found that the cost of diesel is also close to a three-year low at an average of £1.41 per litre.
   
• The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned adverts from Nike and Sky after it found the structure of the ads to be misleading for customers. Sports giant Nike ran an advert on social media advertising a pair of trainers for £26 but when customers clicked through, it became apparent that the ad was for children’s trainers in sizes UK3 to UK6. Similarly, broadcaster Sky was found to have not made it clear that a free Now TV trial would automatically renew with a fee unless it was cancelled. Following complaints, the ASA said it was looking into the way businesses use, what it described as, ‘online choice architecture’ and ‘dark pattern’ tactics. This can include avoiding offering consumers key information until later in the process and ‘drip pricing’, which involves charging small fees throughout the purchasing process. These ‘dark patterns’ can result in “consumers feeling manipulated or annoyed”, consumer group Which? explained.
   
• Elsewhere, 19 train stations across the UK, including London Euston, Birmingham New Street and Glasgow Central, were affected by a cyber-attack on Wednesday. It was reported that those who were logged into the wi-fi at the affected stations were met with a message about terror attacks in Europe. Network Rail confirmed that British Transport Police were investigating the issue and the third-party provider of the wi-fi Telent said it was “aware of the incident” and was “investigating” the issue alongside Network Rail.

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