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Android

'Android Auto For Phone Screens' Is Shutting Down (9to5google.com) 22

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google's ambitions in the car led to Android Auto being redesigned a couple of years ago, mostly to positive feedback. However, the version of Android Auto on phone screens was meant to shut down at the time and has been on life support ever since. Now, that version has stopped working for some users. The aptly named "Android Auto for Phone Screens" was launched in 2019 as Google was forced to delay Google Assistant Driving Mode. That feature, which finally started rolling out in 2020, continued into earlier this year, and has expanded since, was supposed to replace the experience on phone screens. At the time, Google called this app a "stopgap" for users who needed an in-car experience but lacked a vehicle compatible with Android Auto.

In speaking with Google, we are able to confirm that Android Auto for Phone Screens is, indeed, shutting down with the release of Android 12. The experience will not be available for users on Android 12, but still on older versions of the OS. Google says that Assistant Driving Mode will be "the built-in mobile driving experience" on Android 12. Google's full statement follows: "Google Assistant driving mode is our next evolution of the mobile driving experience. For the people who use Android Auto in supported vehicles, that experience isn't going away. For those who use the on phone experience (Android Auto mobile app), they will be transitioned to Google Assistant driving mode. Starting with Android 12, Google Assistant driving mode will be the built-in mobile driving experience. We have no further details to share at this time."

Android

The Google Pixel 5a Is $449, Adds a Bigger Screen and Water Resistance (arstechnica.com) 58

Google's next midrange smartphone is the Pixel 5a, featuring a slightly bigger display than last year's Pixel 4a, a considerably larger battery and IP67 water and dust resistance. It's priced at $449, which is $100 more than the Pixel 4a, and is expected to be the last Google phone to include a charger in the box (sorry Pixel 6 fans). Ars Technica reports: Part of the reason for the price increase is that the Pixel 5a is a bigger phone, with a 6.34-inch display and 73.7 mm width compared to the Pixel 4a's 5.8-inch display and 69.4 mm width. Another big change is the addition of IP67 dust and water resistance, which means the phone should survive submersion in 3 feet of water (1 meter) for 30 minutes. As with the Pixel 5, the Pixel 5a's body is metal coated in plastic instead of the pure plastic body of the Pixel 4a. We didn't see the appeal of this construction in the Pixel 5, but the new phone is presumably stronger now.

As usual, we're getting a no-frills design that takes care of the basics. On the front, there's a slim-bezel OLED display and a hole-punch camera in the top right, while there are two cameras (main and wide-angle) and a capacitive fingerprint reader on the back. Specs include a Snapdragon 765G (that's a 7 nm chip with two Cortex A76 cores and six Cortex A55 cores), 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and the biggest battery of any Pixel: 4680 mAh. The main camera is 12.2 MP and looks like the same Sony IMX363 sensor that Google has used for the past four years. There's a 16 MP wide-angle and an 8 MP front camera. Oh yeah, the headphone jack is sticking around for at least one more year. If there's a disappointment with the Pixel 5a, it's the 60 Hz display, which is looking pretty slow in a world where 90 Hz and 120 Hz are often the norm.
Another important note is that the Pixel 5a will get three years of major updates and three years of security updates. It's currently available for preorder now and starts shipping on August 26.
Television

'Folding Phones Are the New 3D TV' (wired.com) 100

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Wired, written by Lauren Goode: Samsung's newest foldables are even more impressive than the folding models that came before them. (The company first started shipping foldable phones in 2019, after years of development.) And yet, folding phones are still the 3D TVs of the smartphone world: birthed with the intention of swiveling your head toward a product at a time when the market for that product has softened. They're technically complicated. They're expensive. And their usability depends a whole lot on the way content is displayed on them, which means manufacturers could nail all the tech specs and still must wait on software makers (or entertainment companies) to create stuff to fill these space-age screens. All this does not bode well for the future of foldable phones, though some analysts are more optimistic.

Back in the early 2010's, global TV shipments started slipping, as developed markets became saturated with flat-screen TVs. And as prices for LCD TVs sank, so did profits. So TV manufacturers like Sony, LG, and Samsung began hyping the next expensive upgrade: 3D televisions. We tech journalists marched around the annual CES in 3D glasses, hoping to catch a glimpse of a 3D TV that would change our minds about this gimmicky technology. We grew mildly nauseous. We waited for more content. Five years later, 3D TV was dead. At the end of the last decade, WIRED's Brian Barrett summed up the great 3D TV pitch as "what happens when smart people run out of ideas, the last gasp before aspiration gives way to commoditization."

I know: TVs and mobile phones are different beasts. Mobile phones have fundamentally altered the way we live. Billions of handsets have been sold. But about four years ago, global smartphone sales slowed. By 2019, consumers were holding on to their phones for a few extra months before splurging on an upgrade. As smartphones became more secure and reliable, running on desktop-grade chip systems and featuring cameras good enough to decimate the digital camera market, each new iteration of a phone seemed, well, iterative. Enter foldable displays, which are either a desperate gimmick or a genuine leap forward, depending on whom you ask. Or, like 3D TVs, maybe they're both.

Foldables were also supposed to be the ultimate on-the-go device, for road warriors and jet-setters and productivity gurus who want to "stay in the flow" at all times. As I've written before, it's not exactly the best time to beta test this concept, while some of our movements are limited. The context for foldables has changed in the short time since they became commercially available. Of course, that context could always change again. Foldables may be the next frontier in phones, or in tablets, or laptops, or all of the above. They could become commonplace, assumed, as boring as a solid inflexible brick. Maybe we'll manage our decentralized bank accounts on a creaky screen as we shoot into sub-orbital space. Or maybe we'll stare into the screens, two parts fused into one, and hope that the future is something more than this.
The biggest argument for foldables not being 3D TVs, as mentioned by research manager for IDC, Jitesh Ubrani, is the potential utility of foldables.

"Most people in the industry, and even many consumers, believe that ultimately there is just going to be one device you use, you know?" Ubrani says. "And this device will have the ability to function as a phone, as a PC, as a tablet. So where foldables can really drive the technology is by replacing three devices with one."
Hardware

Nokia's Smartphone: 25 Years Since it Changed the World (dw.com) 17

The Nokia 9000 Communicator -- "the office in your back pocket" -- was a smartphone even before the word was invented. It has been 25 years since it revolutionized the market. DW: Nokia presented its 9000 Communicator at the CeBIT 1996 computer fair in Hanover, Germany, and launched on August 15 of that year. "The office in your back pocket" added to the IBM Simon from 1994 and the HP OmniGo 700LX from March 1996. The 9000 Communicator was a smartphone even before the word had been invented. For a decade, the device was ââwhat a smartphone was supposed to look like. After the Communicator, Blackberry perfected the idea -- until Apple's iPhone with its multitouch screen in 2007 came along.

Opened like a minilaptop, with a keyboard and a black-and-white display with a diagonal of just 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches), the retrofuturistic-looking device was made famous by actor Val Kilmer in the remake of the film The Saint. The 9000 Communicator was the first device to offer a combination of keyboard, quality screen, and business and internet software in one package. It had for the first time all of the features of a computer on a phone, putting email, web browsing, fax, word processing and spreadsheets into a single pocketable device.

Cellphones

A Simple Software Fix Could Limit Location Data Sharing (arstechnica.com) 55

Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 quotes Wired: Location data sharing from wireless carriers has been a major privacy issue in recent years... Carriers remain perennially hungry to know as much about you as they can. Now, researchers are proposing a simple plan to limit how much bulk location data they can get from cell towers.

Much of the third-party location data industry is fueled by apps that gain permission to access your GPS information, but the location data that carriers can collect from cell towers has often provided an alternative pipeline. For years it's seemed like little could be done about this leakage, because cutting off access to this data would likely require the sort of systemic upgrades that carriers are loath to make.

At the Usenix security conference on Thursday, though, network security researchers Paul Schmitt of Princeton University and Barath Raghavan of the University of Southern California are presenting a scheme called Pretty Good Phone Privacy that can mask wireless users' locations from carriers with a simple software upgrade that any carrier can adopt—no tectonic infrastructure shifts required... The researchers propose installing portals on every device — using an app or operating system function — that run regular checks with a billing server to confirm that a user is in good standing. The system would hand out digital tokens that don't identify the specific device but simply indicate whether the attached wireless account is paid up.

Security

T-Mobile is Investigating an Alleged Data Breach That Would Affect 100 Million Users (vice.com) 37

Slashdot reader lightbox32 shared this report from Motherboard: T-Mobile says it is investigating a forum post claiming to be selling a mountain of personal data. The forum post itself doesn't mention T-Mobile, but the seller told Motherboard they have obtained data related to over 100 million people, and that the data came from T-Mobile servers.

The data includes social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, unique IMEI numbers, and driver licenses information, the seller said. Motherboard has seen samples of the data, and confirmed they contained accurate information on T-Mobile customers.

Mashable points out that "it's entirely possible that the seller is misrepresenting the scope of the breach and/or the contents of the information they claim to be selling.

"T-Mobile likely isn't going to say anything until there's a clearer sense of the risks its customers are actually facing."
Wireless Networking

Will Google's Tensor Chip Spell Trouble for 5G? (pcmag.com) 140

Google's Pixel 6 phone will be powered by a Tensor processor which PCMag UK believes is "clearly designed to accelerate machine learning and AI." But does it have bigger implications? Tensor is a signpost, not a destination. Google has never sold huge numbers of Pixel phones and isn't signaling a change in strategy there. Rather, it's saying that it would like Android as a whole to shift toward more on-device processing for AI and ML. That could give a big boost to Google's two core businesses, advertising and data. It could also create problems for the future of 5G...

The more your phone can handle its own ML and AI, the less it needs the cloud. For example, a Tensor-enabled phone could potentially analyze your photos and share data locally with on-device advertising APIs, letting Google proclaim that its cloud services never access your raw data. That would help bridge the gap between the privacy you want and the targeted ads Google needs to survive. But a lot of consumer 5G app ideas assume your phone will offload processing or rendering onto the network.

Phones that are mostly self-sufficient aren't going to need high-bandwidth, low-latency networks or "mobile edge computing." Sure, the rise of more Tensor-like ML-focused chips would take pressure off the carriers' still-shaky 5G builds, but it'll also keep raising the question of why consumers need 5G in the first place. That could reduce carriers' willingness to keep investing in their consumer 5G networks.

Although the first sence of the article's last paragraph adds, "Maybe I'm overstating the issue here..."
Technology

Samsung Unveils New Foldable Smartphones With Lower Prices To Expand Market (reuters.com) 14

Samsung Electronics unveiled its latest high-end foldable smartphones on Wednesday with lower prices than last year's offerings in a push to expand foldable demand beyond niche devices. From a report: The tech giant priced its 5G-enabled Galaxy Z Fold3 with 7.6-inch main screen to start at $1,799.99 in the United States, and clamshell Galaxy Z Flip3 at $999.99 - down from the launch prices of last year's models at $1,999 and $1,380, respectively. The Galaxy Z Fold3 and Z Flip3 will launch on August 27 starting in markets such as the United States and Europe.

"There's definitely demand for bigger screens as people consume more media content, and foldables are the only form that makes big screens very portable... the price hurdle is the issue," said Park Sung-soon, an analyst at Cape Investment & Securities. Foldable phones, with about 8.6 million units expected to be shipped this year, are expected to account for just 0.6% of estimated 1.447 billion smartphones to be shipped. However, that is more than double the 3 million foldables shipped in 2020, and Samsung will lead the market with over 88% market share, according to Counterpoint Research. Besides price drops that analysts said could help capture more demand in the United States and perhaps China, Samsung's foldable unveiled on Wednesday touted lighter, thinner and improved design, durability, and compatibility with a stylus, which could absorb users of Samsung's Galaxy Note phablets whose key feature is the "S Pen".

Iphone

Apple Readies New iPhones With Pro-Focused Camera, Video Updates (bloomberg.com) 61

Apple's next iPhone lineup will get at least three major new camera and video-recording features, which the company is betting will be key enticements to upgrade from earlier models. From a report: The new handsets will include a video version of the phone's Portrait mode feature, the ability to record video in a higher-quality format called ProRes, and a new filters-like system that improves the look and colors of photos, according to people familiar with the matter.

Beyond the camera enhancements, the new iPhones will get relatively modest upgrades. Last year, Apple revamped the iPhone design, added 5G wireless networking and updated the camera hardware. For this year, the company will retain the same 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch regular sizes and 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch Pro screen dimensions, as well as their designs. The new phones will include a faster A15 chip and a smaller notch, also known as the display cutout, in addition to new screen technology that could enable a faster refresh rate for smoother scrolling.

Security

Google Drops Bluetooth Titan Security Keys In Favor of NFC Versions (bleepingcomputer.com) 19

Google is discontinuing the Bluetooth Titan Security Key to focus on security keys with Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality. As part of this move, Google has also announced a new Titan Security Key with USB-C and NFC to go along with the previously available USB-A + NFC security key. Bleeping Computer reports: Google's Titan Security Keys were introduced in 2018 and are designed to help users prevent Google account takeover attempts using credentials stolen in data breaches or following phishing attacks. They work with the most popular devices, browsers, and an increasing number of apps that come with FIDO standard support.

"Since NFC functionality is now supported by a wide range of Android phones and iPhones, we are discontinuing the Bluetooth Titan Security Key and focusing on the easier and more widely available NFC capability," said Christiaan Brand, Google Cloud Product Manager. "However, for existing users with our Bluetooth Titan Security Keys, these will continue to work with Bluetooth and will continue to work as an NFC key on most modern mobile devices." The company will also continue to service existing Bluetooth Titan Security Keys until they are out of warranty.

Cellphones

Apple Accused of Promoting Scam Apps in Its App Store (arstechnica.com) 17

"Developers are once again publicly highlighting instances in which Apple has failed to keep scam apps off of the app store," reports Ars Technica: The apps in question charge users unusual fees and siphon revenue from legitimate or higher-quality apps. While Apple has previously come under fire for failing to block apps like these from being published, developers complained this week that Apple was actually actively promoting some of these apps...

Apple continues to play whack-a-mole with these apps, but various developers have both publicly and privately complained that the company takes too long. One developer we exchanged emails with claimed that, when they discovered a scam app that stole assets from their own legitimate app and which was clearly designed to siphon users from the real app, Apple took 10 days to remove the app, while Google only took "1-2 days" on the Android side. The app was allowed back on Apple's App Store once the stolen assets were removed. During the long waiting period, the developer of the legitimate app lost a significant amount of users and revenue, while the developer of the illegitimate app profited.

As Apple fights legal battles to prevent third-party app stores from making their way to iOS on the basis that those alternative app stores may be less secure than Apple's own, claims from developers that scam apps are slipping through may undermine Apple's defense.

Security

How a Security Researcher Took Over a Hotel's IoT Devices (zdnet.com) 36

"The moment you network IoT and hand over control to third parties, you may also give individuals the keys to a digital kingdom — and the ability to cause mischief, or worse," writes ZDNet.

For example, at a hotel where guests control the devices in their room with an iPod Touch... Speaking at Black Hat USA, Las Vegas, security consultant Kya Supa from LEXFO explained how a chain of security weaknesses were combined and exploited to gain control of rooms at a capsule hotel, a budget-friendly type of hotel offering extremely small — and, therefore, cozy — spaces to guests, who are stacked side-by-side... A neighbor, "Bob," kept waking Supa up by making loud phone calls in the early hours of the morning. While Bob had agreed to keep it down, he did not keep his promise — and the researcher set to work since he needed his sleep, especially during his vacation. The first thing Supa did was to explore his room, finding an emergency light installed for safety reasons; a Nasnos automaton center for use in controlling products in case the iPod Touch was lost; an electric motor used to manage the incline of the capsule's bed; and a Nasnos router, hidden in the wall.

If you connected to the router via a smartphone, it was then possible to control other devices on the network, and this was the setup the hotel chose to use... Supa found that two networks were connected — the hotel Wi-Fi and the router. To retrieve the router key, Supa targeted WEP, a protocol that has been known to be weak for years. Access points, each being one of the bedrooms, were found. Supa inspected the traffic and found weak credentials in place — "123" — and you can guess the rest...

By using an Android smartphone, the iPod Touch, and a laptop, the researcher created a Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) architecture and inspected the network traffic. No encryption was found and he created a simple program to tamper with these connections, allowing the researcher to seize control of his bedroom through his laptop... Now that he could "control every bedroom," and Bob was still there, Supa then tampered with the lights of different bedrooms until he found the right one. He created a script that, every two hours, would change the bed into a sofa and turn the lights on and off. The script was launched at midnight. We can probably assume Bob did not enjoy his stay.

"I hope he will be more respectful in the future," Supa commented.

Communications

Chinese Hackers Used Mesh of Home Routers To Disguise Attacks (therecord.media) 25

An anonymous reader quotes The Record: A Chinese cyber-espionage group known as APT31 (or Zirconium) has been seen hijacking home routers to form a proxy mesh around its server infrastructure in order to relay and disguise the origins of their attacks.

In a security alert, the French National Cybersecurity Agency, also known as ANSSI (Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d'Information), published a list of 161 IP addresses that have been hijacked by APT31 in recent attacks against French organizations. French officials said that APT31's proxy botnet was used to perform both reconnaissance operations against their targets, but also to carry out the attacks themselves. The attacks started at the beginning of 2021 and are still ongoing...

The Record understands that APT31 used proxy meshes made of home routers as a way to scan the internet and then launch and disguise its attacks against Exchange email servers earlier this year; however, the technique was also used for other operations as well.

The Internet

Amazon's Older Kindles Will Start To Lose Their Internet Access In December (theverge.com) 122

Amazon's Kindle e-readers with built-in 3G will begin to lose the ability to connect to the internet on their own in the US in December, according to an email sent to customers on Wednesday. The Verge reports: The change is due to mobile carriers transitioning from older 2G and 3G networking technology to newer 4G and 5G networks. For older Kindles without Wi-Fi, this change could mean not connecting to the internet at all. As Good e-Reader first noted in June, newer Kindle devices with 4G support should be fine, but for older devices that shipped with support for 3G and Wi-Fi like the Kindle Keyboard (3rd generation), Kindle Touch (4th generation), Kindle Paperwhite (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th generation), Kindle Voyage (7th generation), and Kindle Oasis (8th generation), users will be stuck with Wi-Fi only. In its email announcement, Amazon stresses that you can still enjoy the content you already own and have downloaded on these devices, you just won't be able to download new books from the Kindle Store unless you're doing it over Wi-Fi.

Things get more complicated for Amazon's older Kindles, like the Kindle (1st and 2nd generation), and the Kindle DX (2nd generation). Since those devices relied solely on 2G or 3G internet connectivity, once the networks are shut down, the only way to get new content onto your device will be through an old-fashioned micro-USB cable. For customers affected by the shutdown, Amazon is offering a modest promotional credit (NEWKINDLE50) through August 15th for $50 towards a new Kindle Paperwhite or Kindle Oasis, along with $15 in-store credit for ebooks. While arguably the company could do more to help affected customers (perhaps by replacing older devices entirely) this issue is largely out of Amazon's hands.

Privacy

Is Your Phone Infected With Pegasus? (fossbytes.com) 75

Fossbytes has an article detailing how you can check to see if your mobile device is infected with the "Pegasus" spyware. What's Pegasus you ask? It's phone-penetrating spy software developed by NSO Group and sold to governments to target journalists and activists around the world. The CEO of NSO Group says law-abiding citizens have "nothing to be afraid of," but that doesn't help us sleep any better. Here's how to check if your device has been compromised (heads up: it's a bit of a technical and lengthy process): First off, you'll need to create an encrypted backup and transfer it to either a Mac or PC. You can also do this on Linux instead, but you'll have to install libimobiledevice beforehand for that. Once the phone backup is transferred, you need to download Python 3.6 (or newer) on your system -- if you don't have it already. Here's how you can install the same for Windows, macOS, and Linux. After that, go through Amnesty's manual to install MVT correctly on your system. Installing MVT will give you new utilities (mvt-ios and mvt-android) that you can use in the Python command line. Now, let's go through the steps for detecting Pegasus on an iPhone backup using MVT.

First of all, you have to decrypt your data backup. To do that, you'll need to enter the following instruction format while replacing the placeholder text (marked with a forward slash) with your custom path: "mvt-ios decrypt-backup -p password -d /decrypted /backup". Note: Replace "/decrypted" with the directory where you want to store the decrypted backup and "/backup" with the directory where your encrypted backup is located.

Now, we will run a scan on the decrypted backup, referencing it with the latest IOCs (possible signs of Pegasus spyware), and store the result in an output folder. To do this, first, download the newest IOCs from here (use the folder with the latest timestamp). Then, enter the instruction format as given below with your custom directory path: "mvt-ios check-backup -o /output -i /pegasus.stix2 /backup". Note: Replace "/output" with the directory where you want to store the scan result, "/backup" with the path where your decrypted backup is stored, and "/pegasus.stix2" with the path where you downloaded the latest IOCs.

After the scan completion, MVT will generate JSON files in the specified output folder. If there is a JSON file with the suffix "_detected," then that means your iPhone data is most likely Pegasus-infected. However, the IOCs are regularly updated by Amnesty's team as they develop a better understanding of how Pegasus operates. So, you might want to keep running scans as the IOCs are updated to make sure there are no false positives.

Cellphones

Teen Loneliness Has Increased in 36 Countries. The Reason May be Smartphones (yahoo.com) 136

"Loneliness among adolescents around the globe has skyrocketed since a decade ago," reports the Washington Post, "and it may be tied to smartphone use, a new study finds." In 36 out of 37 countries, feelings of loneliness among teenagers rose sharply between 2012 and 2018, with higher increases among girls, according to a report released Tuesday in the Journal of Adolescence. Researchers used data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, a survey of over 1 million 15- and 16-year-old students. The survey included a six-item measure of loneliness at school in 2000, 2003, 2012, 2015 and 2018. Before 2012, the trends had stayed relatively flat. But between 2012 and 2018, nearly twice as many teens displayed high elevated levels of "school loneliness," an established predictor of depression and mental health issues. (The study did not cover the period of the coronavirus pandemic, which also may have affected teen well-being.)

"It's surprising that the trend would be so similar across so many different countries," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and the study's lead author. "On the other hand, if this trend is caused by smartphones or electronic communication, a worldwide increase is exactly what you'd expect to see." In an earlier study, Twenge had identified 2012 as the year when smartphone ownership passed 50 percent in the United States...

In the worldwide study, school loneliness was not correlated with factors such as income inequality, gross domestic product and family size, but it did correlate with increases in smartphone and Internet use. By 2012, most of the countries in the study had reached a point where at least half of teens had access to smartphones, and that is when teen loneliness levels began to rise, Twenge said. "When it got to that saturation point where social media was virtually mandatory and practically everybody had a phone, it changed things," she said. As smartphone adoption spread in the 2010s, adolescents spent less time interacting in person and more time using digital media, the paper said, adding, "Given that digital media does not produce as much emotional closeness as in-person interaction, the result may be more loneliness in recent years...."

School administrators and teachers have noted the changes. Lunchrooms and hallways, formerly raucous places, have in recent years fallen silent as teens have turned to their devices. Some are taking action on the local or national level. In 2018, France stopped allowing smartphones at school for students in elementary and middle school.

Cellphones

Church Official Exposed Through America's 'Vast and Largely Unregulated Data-Harvesting' (nytimes.com) 101

The New York Times' On Tech newsletter shares a thought-provoking story: This week, a top official in the Roman Catholic Church's American hierarchy resigned after a news site said that it had data from his cellphone that appeared to show the administrator using the L.G.B.T.Q. dating app Grindr and regularly going to gay bars. Journalists had access to data on the movements and digital trails of his mobile phone for parts of three years and were able to retrace where he went.

I know that people will have complex feelings about this matter. Some of you may believe that it's acceptable to use any means necessary to determine when a public figure is breaking his promises, including when it's a priest who may have broken his vow of celibacy. To me, though, this isn't about one man. This is about a structural failure that allows real-time data on Americans' movements to exist in the first place and to be used without our knowledge or true consent. This case shows the tangible consequences of practices by America's vast and largely unregulated data-harvesting industries. The reality in the United States is that there are few legal or other restrictions to prevent companies from compiling the precise locations of where we roam and selling that information to anyone.

This data is in the hands of companies that we deal with daily, like Facebook and Google, and also with information-for-hire middlemen that we never directly interact with. This data is often packaged in bulk and is anonymous in theory, but it can often be traced back to individuals, as the tale of the Catholic official shows...

Losing control of our data was not inevitable. It was a choice — or rather a failure over years by individuals, governments and corporations to think through the consequences of the digital age.

We can now choose a different path.

"Data brokers are the problem," writes the EFF, arguing that the incident "shows once again how easy it is for anyone to take advantage of data brokers' stores to cause real harm." This is not the first time Grindr has been in the spotlight for sharing user information with third-party data brokers... But Grindr is just one of countless apps engaging in this exact kind of data sharing. The real problem is the many data brokers and ad tech companies that amass and sell this sensitive data without anything resembling real users' consent.

Apps and data brokers claim they are only sharing so-called "anonymized" data. But that's simply not possible. Data brokers sell rich profiles with more than enough information to link sensitive data to real people, even if the brokers don't include a legal name. In particular, there's no such thing as "anonymous" location data. Data points like one's home or workplace are identifiers themselves, and a malicious observer can connect movements to these and other destinations. Another piece of the puzzle is the ad ID, another so-called "anonymous" label that identifies a device. Apps share ad IDs with third parties, and an entire industry of "identity resolution" companies can readily link ad IDs to real people at scale.

All of this underlines just how harmful a collection of mundane-seeming data points can become in the wrong hands... That's why the U.S. needs comprehensive data privacy regulation more than ever. This kind of abuse is not inevitable, and it must not become the norm.

Iphone

LG Might Sell iPhones In Its Stores After Quitting Android Devices (androidauthority.com) 20

LG will reportedly start selling iPhones and iPads in its South Korean stores this August -- mere months after the company quit making Android devices. Android Authority reports: According to MacRumors, the Herald Economic Daily claims LG has struck a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone and iPad in 400 stores across South Korea starting in August. LG may have to overcome some hurdles to make this happen. The company reportedly signed a "win-win" agreement with the country's National Mobile Communication Distribution Association that bars it from selling a direct competitor's phones in its stores. That deal was made in 2018, however, or well before LG signaled that it would quit making phones and tablets. LG is supposedly planning to renegotiate the agreement once it officially sells the iPhone and iPad in its shops. The deal unsurprisingly wouldn't include Macs, as systems like the MacBook Air compete directly with the Gram series and other LG computers where the iPhone and iPad are relatively safe.
Cellphones

Scientists Create the World's Toughest Self-Healing Material (interestingengineering.com) 19

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: [Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata] along with those at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur decided to focus on developing something that is harder than conventional self-healing material, as reported by The Telegraph India. The researchers used a piezoelectric organic material, which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy and vice versa, to make needle-shaped crystals that aren't more than 2 mm long or 0.2 mm wide, according to the experimental results which were published in the journal Science. Due to their molecular arrangement in the specially designed crystals, a strong attractive force developed between two surfaces. Every time a fracture occurred, the attractive forces joined the pieces back again, without needing an external stimulus such as heat or others that most self-healing materials would need.

"Our self-healing material is 10 times harder than others, and it has a well-ordered internal crystalline structure, that is favored in most electronics and optical applications," lead researcher Professor Chilla Malla Reddy of IISER said. "I can imagine applications for an everyday device," said Bhanu Bhushan Khatua, a member of the team from IIT Kharagpur." Such materials could be used for mobile phone screens that will repair themselves if they fall and develop cracks."

Cellphones

iOS and Android Activations Now Split Evenly In the US, Research Shows (macrumors.com) 113

Activations of iOS and Android devices are now evenly split in the United States, with little sign of movement toward either platform dominating over the past two years, according to data sourced by Consumer Research Intelligence Partners (CIRP). MacRumors reports: CIRP estimates that iOS and Android each had 50 percent of new smartphone activations in the year ending this quarter. iOS's share of new smartphone activations climbed from 2017 to 2020, but has now remained at its peak level for a second consecutive year. CIRP Partner and Co-Founder Josh Lowitz said that the finding is significant because for several years, Android smartphones "had a significant edge, with over 60 percent of customers opting for an Android phone in most quarters. In the past couple of years, though, iOS has closed the gap, and now splits the market with Android."

Both Android and iOS users have had a high level of loyalty historically. Android loyalty has varied very slightly, in a narrow range of 90 to 93 percent in the past four years. iOS loyalty, on the other hand, has gradually increased over the past four years, from a low of 86 percent in early 2018 to 93 percent in the most recent quarter ending in June 2021. Loyalty and tendency to switch platforms may explain some of the change in the share of new smartphone activations, where iOS has gained loyalty in a market with a limited amount of switching.

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