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Challenger bank Chime has reached 5 million customers in the U.S. The San Francisco-based startup is creating an FDIC-insured mobile bank without any physical branch. The company also promises less fees.

Back in March, Chime said it had 3 million customers when it announced its $200 million Series D round. So that’s 2 million additional customers in roughly 5 months.

Chime says that it is the fastest growing challenger bank in the world. In other words, the company is throwing shade at European challenger banks, such as Monzo and N26, that have been doing really well too. N26 just entered the U.S. market.

The company is also rolling out a new feature that it has been testing for a while. Chime SpotMe is an alternative to bank overdrafts. It is specifically targeted at people who deposit their paycheck into their Chime account but also live paycheck to paycheck.

Chime users who receive payroll direct deposit of at least $500 per month can sign up to Chime SpotMe. After that, you can keep spending with your debit card even if your balance goes below $0. Your overdraft limit will depend on multiple factors but some users will be able to overdraw their account by $100.

When you next paycheck arrives, your negative balance is paid back and you don’t pay any overdrafts fee. The company says that you can also optionally leave a tip to help other Chime users make both ends meet.

When we met with Misty back at CES, the Sphero spinoff had an April timeframe for its programmable robot, Misty II. But the best laid plans, et al. The startup announced this morning that it’s started shipping the robot to its around 500 or so crowdfunding backers over the coming weeks. It’s a few months late, but that’s just kind of the life of the robotics startup.

And as we’ve mentioned in previous posts, the company’s got a pretty long runway for its ambitious plans. They started last year with the modular, handmade Misty I. The Misty II is still more platform than product, with the intention of giving developers a place to create various robotics tasks.

Early gen two models have already been seeded to a handful of developers, who have begun to create a wide range of different functions for the plucky little robot, including property inspection, environmental monitoring, eldercare and autism therapy. The potential applications go well beyond that, leveraging the robot’s different on-board technologies, including locomotion, facial recognition and programmable personality traits.

“Delivering Misty II to our crowdfunding backers is a major milestone for the company as they will play a special role in helping us prepare Misty for her official market launch later this year,” founder Ian Bernstein said in a release tied to the news. “Our backers are investors in the vision of personal robots becoming a reality in our lives. We are very excited to see how hundreds of developers bring Misty to life.”

Five-hundred developers is a drop in the bucket, but it does prove that there’s some interest in the product. The company will continue to offer pre-orders on the robot for $2,399, with a full market launch set for later in the year.

Clue, an app built on machine learning to track a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle, has been paying close attention lately to those with irregular periods. The Berlin-based company hopes to identify what may be causing those irregular cycles and then calculate a woman’s risk of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) in order to get her the help she needs from a medical provider.

For those who don’t know, PCOS is a sometimes painful disease that can put a woman at risk of infertility, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and endometriosis, among other issues. The most common indicator a woman has PCOS is an unpredictable cycle, showing up whenever it wants and making it difficult to plan around.

Those using the app will be able to get insight on what’s going on and why their period doesn’t always come on time using the newly launched ‘Irregular Cycles’ feature within the app.

A few other apps also have a built-in irregular cycles tracking feature. One (on the nose) app called Period Tracker, which can be found in both the App Store and Google Play is specifically designed to track irregular cycles. Another app from Planned Parenthood called Spot On is geared more towards teens and is intended to help them track how their period changes over time. But there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of identifying PCOS or gathering data on what may be causing these irregular cycles from these other apps.

According to Clue, its newly released tool uses a combination questionnaire and “dynamic Bayesian network” to come up with the most useful questions and then pinpoint whether users may be able to blame PCOS for their cycle woes.

But not just anyone can access this feature — it’s only for those Clue recognizes as having clinically irregular or unpredictable cycles and are not on birth control. So if you’re just curious but have a predictable as rain period, this is not the feature for you.

Clue already rolled out the feature to a test group of users with some success. “Of the users that received an assessment of potential PCOS, a significant portion reported visiting a healthcare professional for diagnosis within a month of the assessment,” Clue founder Ida Tin told TechCrunch. “Along with collaborator Dr. Shruthi Mahalingaiah, we plan to dive deeper into the data to see what additional patterns can be uncovered and where we can provide more benefit to our users.”

Often PCOS comes up as a cause of inability to conceive, with the majority (80%, according the the National Institute of Health) of infertility attributed to this disease. But even those with regular cycles aren’t necessarily ovulating (dropping an egg to be fertilized in the womb) each and every month.

Tin hopes the data she and her team gleans from the new in-app feature will help users better predict health issues affecting ovulation and their cycle in general.

“A change, particularly when sudden, in one’s own usual cycle length pattern may be indicative of a health matter deserving of attention,” she told TechCrunch. “For example, if a person typically has cycles 26-32 days in length and suddenly starts having cycles 20-25 days in length, then it is worth seeing a health care provider.”

Last year, Roku entered the speaker business with the debut of the Roku TV Wireless Speakers. Today, it’s expanding its portfolio of audio products with the launch of two new products: the Roku Smart Soundbar and Roku Wireless Subwoofer, both at $180 each. Like the wireless speakers, the soundbar and subwoofer are meant to give consumers a way to improve their overall streaming experience by upgrading their sound. But unlike last year’s speakers, the products will work with any TV — not just Roku’s own brand.

“We have these fantastic, new 4K giant TVs that don’t really have space for good speakers,” explained Roku VP of Product Management, Mark Ely, as to why Roku wanted to expand further into audio. “And that’s compounded by audio volume levels that have been all over the map, from loud commercials to really quiet dialog passages in movies. That has people constantly hitting the volume controls on the remote.”

Roku has been trying to address these issues by investing in smart audio solutions, like its easy-to-pair speakers offering premium sound and its Automatic Volume Leveling technology that lowers the sound for you in loud scenes and raises it when it gets too quiet.

With the Roku Smart Soundbar, the company is offering a similar feature set in a different form factor.

The new device itself is also powered by Roku OS, offers simple setup, and includes four premium drivers to provide better clarity and depth, and dynamic bass response, says Roku. With Night Mode, the soundbar lowers the volume for louder scenes and boosts it for quiet ones. Speech Clarity boosts the voice frequencies to make it easier to hear the dialog.

It also supports Dolby Audio and can connect by way of an HDMI ARC port or HDMI and optical audio input. And it offers a Bluetooth connection, so you can stream music, podcasts and other audio programs from a Bluetooth-compatible device.

The “smart” part of the speaker also has to do with its ability to listen and respond to voice commands, which lets you do things like launch channels or entertainment, turn on or off the captions, replay scenes, and more, when using the included Roku Voice Remote. It additionally supports connections with either the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, if you use their smart devices in your home.

This is either a perk of using Roku over Amazon Fire TV or a drawback, depending on your point of view.

On the one hand, the option to integrate with either of the top smart voice assistants is useful. But on the other, Roku’s own voice tech is not as advanced as Alexa or Google Assistant, as it’s focused more on the TV experience and related commands. That can lead to a wonky experience when you try to use Roku via Alexa, for instance, and the poor reviews for Roku’s Alexa skill demonstrate the downside of this sort of integration.

The second new product, the Roku Wireless Subwoofer, is designed for people who want a more theater-like experience at home.

The device can be placed anywhere within 30 feet of the new soundbar, and offers a digital amplifier with 250W peak power (125W RMS), 10″ driver, as low as 40Htz, and 802.11ac dual-band wireless.

Like the speakers, the setup is simple and involves just holding down the home button to pair the device and get up-and-running. Currently, it works with the brand-new Wireless Soundbar, but the Roku Wireless Speakers will get an update in the next few months to add compatibility with the subwoofer.

The company believes the soundbar will be a good alternative for non-Roku TV customers as well as those who don’t have space for the bookshelf-style wireless speakers it previously sold. Meanwhile, the subwoofer will better cater to those looking for a home theater-type experience at a reasonable price point.

More broadly, the new hardware significantly expands Roku’s entry into premium audio, and its investment in the hardware side of its business.

This is no longer the area that delivers the majority of the company’s revenue. Instead, Roku’s platform business, led by advertising, has out-earned hardware sales for the past five quarters. In Q2, Roku beat on earnings with $250.1 million in revenue, versus $224.4 million expected and it was advertising driving that rise.

That said, Roku’s hardware is performing well, in terms of consumer acceptance. Roku is now the top streaming platform in the U.S., and more than 1 in 3 smart TVs in the U.S. are Roku TVs.

Neither device of the new devices were offered for testing, but they are available for pre-order starting today from Roku.com with plans to ship by October. They’ll also be available for purchase at Best Buy at that time. Both are priced at $179.99 MSRP. (For comparison’s sake, the Wireless Speakers are $199.).

Full specs are below.

Soundbar:

• 32” 2.0 soundbar with four 2.5” speakers
• 4K Ultra HD, HDR, 1080p & 720p HD streaming up to 60fps
• 802.11ac dual-band wireless
• HDMI ARC
• Optical audio input
• Bluetooth
• Dolby Audio
• USB 2.0
• Comes with:
  • Roku Smart Soundbar
  • Premium High-Speed HDMI Cable
  • Optical Cable
  • Voice remote
  • Two AAA batteries

Subwoofer:

• Digital amplifier with 250W peak power (125W RMS)
• As low as 40Htz
• 802.11ac dual-band wireless
• 10” driver
• Comes with:
  • Roku Wireless Subwoofer
  • Power cable

Neura, a startup that helps developers see how users interact with their apps, has raised a Series B of $16 million. The round was led by returning investors Pitango Venture Capital and Liberty Technology Venture. Other participants included Moneta Capital, Amdocs and AXA Ventures.

The San Francisco-headquartered startup’s last round of funding was an $11 million Series A announced in 2016. The new round brings its total funding to $32 million and will be used on hiring, growing its business in the United States and the European Union and launching new products.

Neura currently has more than 30 clients in sectors including travel and hospitality, transportation and ride-sharing, health, e-commerce, food delivery and insurance. Its SDK enables developers to analyze data about how users engage with their apps and also how they use their mobile devices.

For example, menstrual cycle tracker MyDays used Neura to analyze how users respond to push notifications. It saw that when the app used notifications sent at set times of the day, more than 30% of their users received them while they were asleep and 25% got them after they had begun their daily routines. MyDays created notifications customized to when its users are most likely to respond to them, helping it increase retention by 32%.

For years, Neura has said it prioritizes protecting the privacy of users, an issue that is now gaining more awareness among consumers thanks to high-profile scandals like Cambridge Analytica-Facebook.

In an email, CEO Amit Hammer said that “focused on customer experiences, rather than advertising, Neura does not collect any personally identifiable information (PII) or user id, and is compliant with the strictest privacy regulations, such as GDPR. Today’s consumers expect relevant and personalized digital experiences without compromising their privacy. We are glad to see more transparency in the mobile ecosystem.”

Research by a privacy rights advocacy group has found popular mental health websites in the EU are sharing users’ sensitive personal data with advertisers.

Europeans going online to seek support with mental health issues are having sensitive health data tracked and passed to third parties, according to Privacy International’s findings — including depression websites passing answers and results of mental health check tests direct to third parties for ad targeting purposes.

The charity used the open source Webxray tool to analyze the data gathering habits of 136 popular mental health web pages in France, Germany and the UK, as well as looking at a small sub-set of online depression tests (the top three Google search results for the phrase per country).

It has compiled its findings into a report called Your mental health for sale.

“Our findings show that many mental health websites don’t take the privacy of their visitors as seriously as they should,” Privacy International writes. “This research also shows that some mental health websites treat the personal data of their visitors as a commodity, while failing to meet their obligations under European data protection and privacy laws.”

Under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there are strict rules governing the processing of health data — which is classified as special category personal data.

If consent is being used as the legal basis to gather this type of data the standard that must be obtained from the user is “explicit” consent.

In practice that might mean a pop-up before you take a depression test which asks whether you’d like to share your mental health with a laundry list of advertisers so they can use it to sell you stuff when you’re feeling low — also offering a clear ‘hell no’ penalty-free choice not to consent (but still get to take the test).

Safe to say, such unvarnished consent screens are as rare as hen’s teeth on the modern Internet.

But, in Europe, beefed up privacy laws are now being used to challenge the ‘data industrial complex’s systemic abuses and help individuals enforce their rights against a behavior-tracking adtech industry that regulators have warned is out of control.

Among Privacy International’s key findings are that —

• 76.04% of the mental health web pages contained third-party trackers for marketing purposes
• Google trackers are almost impossible to avoid, with 87.8% of the web pages in France having a Google tracker, 84.09% in Germany and 92.16% in the UK
•  Facebook is the second most common third-party tracker after Google, with 48.78% of all French web pages analysed sharing data with Facebook; 22.73% for Germany; and 49.02 % for the UK.
• Amazon Marketing Services were also used by many of the mental health web pages analysed (24.39% of analyzed web pages in France; 13.64 % in Germany; and 11.76% in the UK)
• Depression-related web pages used a large number of third-party tracking cookies which were placed before users were able to express (or deny) consent. On average, PI found the mental health web pages placed 44.49 cookies in France; 7.82 for Germany; and 12.24 for the UK

European law around consent as a legal basis for processing (general) personal data — including for dropping tracking cookies — requires it to be informed, specific and freely given. This means websites that wish to gather user data must clearly state what data they intend to collect for what purpose, and do so before doing it, providing visitors with a free choice to accept or decline the tracking.

Dropping tracking cookies without even asking clearly falls foul of that legal standard. And very far foul when you consider the personal data being handled by these mental health websites is highly sensitive special category health data.

“It is exceedingly difficult for people to seek mental health information and for example take a depression test without countless of third parties watching,” said Privacy International technologist Eliot Bendinelli in a statement. “All website providers have a responsibility to protect the privacy of their users and comply with existing laws, but this is particularly the case for websites that share unusually granular or sensitive data with third parties. Such is the case for mental health websites.”

Additionally, the group’s analysis found some of the trackers embedded on mental health websites are used to enable a programmatic advertising practice known as Real Time Bidding (RTB). 

This is important because RTB is subject to multiple complaints under GDPR.

These complaints argue that the systematic, high velocity trading of personal data is, by nature, inherently insecure — with no way for people’s information to be secured after it’s shared with hundreds or even thousands of entities involved in the programmatic chain, because there’s no way to control it once it’s been passed. And, therefore, that RTB fails to comply with the GDPR’s requirement that personal data be processed securely.

Complaints are being considered by regulators across multiple Member States. But this summer the UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, essentially signalled it is in agreement with the crux of the argument — putting the adtech industry on watch in an update report in which it warns that behavioral advertising is out of control and instructs the industry it must reform.

However the regulator also said it would give players “an appropriate period of time to adjust their practices”, rather than wade in with a decision and banhammers to enforce the law now.

The ICO’s decision to opt for an implied threat of future enforcement to push for reform of non-compliant adtech practices, rather than taking immediate action to end privacy breaches, drew criticism from privacy campaigners.

And it does look problematic now, given Privacy International’s findings suggest sensitive mental health data is being sucked up into bid requests and put about at insecure scale — where it could pose a serious risk to individuals’ rights and freedoms.

Privacy International says it found “numerous” mental health websites including trackers from known data brokers and AdTech companies — some of which engage in programmatic advertising. It also found some depression test websites (namely: netdoktor.de, passeportsante.net and doctissimo.fr, out of those it looked at) are using programmatic advertising with RTB.

“The findings of this study are part of a broader, much more systemic problem: The ways in which companies exploit people’s data to target ads with ever more precision is fundamentally broken,” adds Bendinelli. “We’re hopeful that the UK regulator is currently probing the AdTech industry and the many ways it uses special category data in ways that are neither transparent nor fair and often lack a clear legal basis.”

We’ve reached out to the ICO with questions.

We also asked the Internet Advertising Bureau Europe what steps it is taking to encourage reform of RTB to bring the system into compliance with EU privacy law. At the time of writing the industry association had not responded.

The IAB recently released a new version of what it refers to as a “transparency and consent management framework” intended for websites to embed to collect consent from visitors to processing their data including for ad targeting purposes — legally, the IAB contends.

However critics argue this is just another dose of business as usual ‘compliance theatre’ from the adtech industry — with users offered only phoney choices as there’s no real control over how their personal data gets used or where it ends up.

Earlier this year Google’s lead privacy regulator in Europe, the Irish DPC, opened a formal investigation into the company’s processing of personal data in the context of its online Ad Exchange — also as a result of a RTB complaint filed in Ireland.

The DPC said it will look at each stage of an ad transaction to establish whether the ad exchange is processing personal data in compliance with GDPR — including looking at the lawful basis for processing; the principles of transparency and data minimisation; and its data retention practices.

The outcome of that investigation remains to be seen. (Fresh fuel has just today been poured on with the complainant submitting new evidence of their personal data being shared in a way they allege infringes the GDPR.)

Increased regulatory attention on adtech practices is certainly highlighting plenty of legally questionable and ethically dubious stuff — like embedded tracking infrastructure that’s taking liberal notes on people’s mental health condition for ad targeting purposes. And it’s clear that EU regulators have a lot more work to do to deliver on the promise of GDPR.

For a seemingly tough pitch, Light has had little trouble getting noticed. The company has run two successful crowdfunding campaigns for a pair of minimalist phones designed to augment or replace the smartphone. Today the startup announced that it will be shipping the second version of the handset, which introduces a handful of features back into the product, like texting.

Ahead of the launch, we spoke to Light’s founders, Kaiwei Tang and Joe Hollier, about funding, feature glut and the future of the handset.

How it all began

Brian Heater: The project essentially started as an in-house at Google, is that correct?

Kaiwei Tang: We met in 2014 in Google’s incubator called 30 Weeks. That’s where we met and started talking about Light Phone eventually.

Joe Hollier: 30 Weeks program was an experiment that came out of the Google creative lab, and their hypothesis was that if given the right resources, guidance, designers might be able to create new creative startups, and that designers should be on the founding table of companies.

So their hypothesis was that we as designers would be able to imagine a new going to startup in the software application space, and then through designing the end product, which is how the Google creative lab works, we’d be able to inspire the engineers and make the funding investors that we would need to make the product a reality.

Brian: What did you see in the market that wasn’t being fulfilled by countless different smartphone companies?

Joe: People were feeling overwhelmed by their smartphone and craving some escape, and we didn’t really see an escape.

There’s that pesky catch-22 you’ve got to get out of the way when discussing the Light Phone and its successor. There’s an inherent irony to a piece of technology created with the express purpose of weaning us off technology. But it’s 2019, and inherent irony is kind of the name of the game.

Light certainly has its share of supporters. As the company announces that it has both begun shipping the Light Phone II to Indiegogo backers and made the product more directly available through its site at $350 (via pre-order), it’s also revealing its funding for the first time. As of this writing, the company has raised $12.3 million.

The crowdfunding parts we knew about, of course. The original phone raised a solid $400,000 on Kickstarter. The Indiegogo campaign for the second version blew that out of the water at $3.5 million with an emphasis on pre-orders. Turns out VCs are getting in on the action, as well, with $8.4 million raised in seed. Hinge Capital, Bullish, White Bay Group, Able Partners, Product Co-Op and HAX have all chipped in, but the leader is the most interesting of the bunch.

Foxconn is the biggest investor of the bunch. The manufacturing giant, naturally, is also helping the company build the handsets and scale things as Light looks toward retail channels beyond its current online offering.

“They’ve been building smart phones for 20, 30 years,” co-founder Kaiwei Tang told TechCrunch. “When we came to them with the first Light Phone, it was just a simplified, voice-only device. Right after the pitch, I was talking to the sales VP who said, ‘hey Kai, I need Light Phone right now. Smartphone has ruined my life. My kids don’t talk to me.’ ”

A number of other high-profile angel investors were equally taken with the notion of a simplified device that could deliver core functionality while weaning users off of smartphone dependence. John Zimmer (Lyft), Michael Mignano and Nir Zicherman (Anchor), Tim Kendall (Moment) and Scott Belsky (Adobe) have all invested, as well.

Like the original Light Phone, the new version presents a sort of built-in paradox for its creators. If the underlying idea is stripping non-core functionality, isn’t introducing a second version with new features somewhat counter-productive?

The new model will get ridesharing (partner to be announced), music playback (likely via on-board storage for starters), turn-by-turn direction and find my phone features. Among other things, the functionality of those features will be limited by the E Ink display. The phone also finds the company making the jump from 2G to LTE. Users can pop in a SIM from AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile.

“To use an analogy, we’re offering a beautifully designed screwdriver that does one thing well,” says Tang. “Obviously, the Light Phone being an E Ink screen and small size limits it to the users. We don’t encourage people to play videos, or watch video on it. But making a phone call, getting a taxi, listening to music (yes, there’s a headphone jack), recording a voice memo. Maybe down the road they have a calendar reminder, those are the simple tools; it has a clear goal.”

The Light Phone II is probably the least pretty device I’ve reviewed for this site. It’s small, but chunky, like a shrunken e-reader with a screen too small to actually use for e-books. It’s got just enough functionality to (hopefully) free you of your smartphone for hours at a time.

Light says it has sold “tens of thousands” of units. It shipped 15,000 of the first generation and somehow has in the neighborhood of 40,000 reservations it hasn’t filled for the device. The company is looking to push those users toward the Light Phone 2. That device, meanwhile, has around 10,000 pre-orders at present.

What do you get when you mix 500 highly skilled code poets, 36 hours of sleep-deprived coding and an unlimited supply caffeine? If you guessed the TC Hackathon you are correct! Come and pit your mad programming skills against the best in the world at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December.

We’re limiting the number of participants to 500, so don’t wait — apply to compete in the TC Hackathon today. It doesn’t cost a thing, and you’ll even get a free Innovator pass to Disrupt Berlin.

The TC Hackathon is a series of sponsored challenges that will test your skills to the max. In addition to sponsor prizes, TechCrunch will award a $5,000 prize to the top overall hack. We’ll announce the specific sponsors, challenges and prizes in the coming weeks, but all of them will be looking for working solutions to real-world problems. You can get a sense of what to expect by looking at the sponsored contests, prizes and winners from the Disrupt SF 2018 Hackathon.

If you’re chosen to compete, you’ll join a team onsite (if you’re not already part of a team), choose which challenge you’ll take on and spend the next 24-ish hours busting your hump to design, code and create something great.

A panel of judges will look at all the completed projects in a science-fair style format and choose 10 teams to move into the final round. On day two, each of those teams will pitch their work in just two minutes on the Extra Crunch Stage.

Sponsors will announce the winners of the individual hacks and award their prizes, and then TechCrunch will select one team to receive $5,000 for the best overall hack.

You’ll be pushed to your limits, both mentally and physically, in that really fun kind of way. Plus, it’s a tremendous opportunity to connect and network with your community. Who knows, you might even find a co-founder for your own startup or meet a potential employer.

The TC Hackathon returns to Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December. Seats are limited, so don’t wait. Come show us and the startup world what you can do. Apply right here, today.

Is your company interested in sponsoring the TC Hackathon? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Amazon India and Walmart’s Flipkart, two of the largest e-commerce businesses in India, have pledged to curb the usage of single-use plastic in their packaging as they move to help New Delhi fight its ongoing battle with environmental pollution.

Amazon said on Wednesday it will replace all single-use plastic in its packaging by June 2020 with paper cushions. The move follows Flipkart’s announcement last week when it said it has already cut its reliance on single-use plastic by 25% and intended to move entirely to recycled plastic consumption in its supply chain by March 2021.

Amazon said it will use paper cushions to replace plastic dunnage like air pillows and bubble wraps across its fulfillment centers in India. “Paper cushions will be used to fill the void space inside packages to ensure that the product is well protected in transit,” the company said in a statement.

In a statement, Akhil Saxena, VP of Customer Fulfillment at Amazon India, said the company will also train its sellers who directly fulfill customer orders to curb their reliance on single-use plastic. “This investment in protecting the environment ensures a triple win — it is good for our planet, good for our customers and community, and good for the business,” he said.

The Indian government, which has previously acknowledged that the nation is getting flooded with plastic waste, is widely expected to announce major steps to curb pollution in the coming days.

“E-commerce companies are the ones creating all this waste, so the onus of recycling it has to be put on them as well,” environment secretary C.K. Mishra told Indian outlet Economic Times last week.

More to follow…