The United States Mission in Nigeria has announced a new requirement for visa applicants, mandating the disclosure of all social media usernames and handles used in the past five years.

The directive was issued on Monday via a post on the Mission’s official X (formerly Twitter) account. It aligns with the U.S. Department of State’s broader efforts to strengthen national security through enhanced applicant screening procedures.

According to the U.S. Mission, Nigerian applicants must provide a complete list of their social media profiles on the DS-160 visa application form, which is used for non-immigrant visa requests.

“Visa applicants are required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used from the last 5 years on the DS-160 visa application form,” the Mission stated.

It further cautioned that failure to accurately disclose this information may result in visa denial and could affect future eligibility for U.S. visas.

“Applicants certify that the information in their visa application is true and correct before they sign and submit. Omitting social media information could lead to visa denial and ineligibility for future visas,” the statement added.

The measure is part of a broader U.S. policy introduced in recent years, aimed at tightening immigration controls and improving background checks for travelers to the United States.

Google agreed on Monday to pay a A$55 million ($35.8 million) fine in Australia after the consumer watchdog found it had hurt competition by paying the country’s two largest telcos to pre-install its search application on Android phones, excluding rival search engines.

Reuters report that the fine extends a bumpy period for the Alphabet-owned internet giant in Australia, where last week a court mostly ruled against it in a lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games accusing Google and Apple of preventing rival application stores in their operating systems.

Google’s YouTube was also last month added to an Australian ban on social media platforms admitting users aged under 16, reversing an earlier decision to exempt the video-sharing site.

On anti-competitive tie-ups with Australian telcos, the country’s consumer watchdog on Monday said Google struck deals with Telstra and Optus, under which the tech giant shared with them advertising revenue generated from Google Search on Android devices between late 2019 and early 2021.

•Rodrigo Paz Pereira is the frontrunner in Bolivia’s first-round presidential election which took place on Sunday.© Freddy Barragán/AP

Bolivia is set to elect a non-left wing president after nearly two decades of near-continuous rule by the incumbent socialist party, according to official preliminary results.

Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira and former president Jorge Quiroga came in first and second place respectively in Sunday’s presidential elections.

Neither received a high enough share of the vote to secure an outright win, so the vote will go to a run-off between these two candidates, due in October.

Paz Pereira, of the Christian Democratic Party, was a surprise vote leader, after opinion polls had suggested Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman, was the frontrunner.

The electoral authorities said it can take up to three days to finalise the results.