Last year, Google released its Titan security keys in two different varieties: USB and Bluetooth Low Energy. The idea behind Titan is the same as any security key, which was to give people a hardware two factor authentication method. Everything was all fine and dandy for a while, but then today, Google alerted users to a rather peculiar flaw in its BLE Titan keys.
While most us probably aren't following Google's IO 2019 keynote for new developments on data privacy and security, that topic actually turned into a big segment of the show. Google announced a number of new initiatives today that aim to not only give users more control over how their data is stored, but also to make them more secure across the internet. Those initiatives begin with auto-delete for web and app activity.
Though we're now a year out from the massive Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal, we're being reminded of it today with two more instances of third-party Facebook apps mishandling user data. Both of these apps stored data collected from Facebook users in publicly accessible Amazon S3 libraries, and though it's difficult to get a handle on how many users had their data exposed, it's likely that the number stretches well into the millions.
Phishing should be a concern of everyone using the internet, but it isn't always easy to spot malicious attachments and links. In fact, it can be quite difficult, as the unsavory folks of the world have become quite adept at covering their tracks and making everything seem legitimate. That much is made obvious in a new quiz from Jigsaw and Google, which tests your phishing know-how.
It's time to change your passwords - all of them. A newly revealed collection of email addresses, accounts, and passwords now constitutes the largest set ever exposed. And it appeared just this week. The sheer size of this breach of information eclipses that of any other single incident - and the chances that your email isn't amongst the leaked is small.
Republic Wireless has introduced a new data-only SIM card that gives customers a new way to use their phone away from WiFi. The data-only SIM is being offered in two varieties: 30 days and 90 days, both with unlimited data. The new plans are offered without contracts, but there are some important limitations surrounding speeds and roaming.
Google's latest update on Online Security for apps seems to suggest that they mean serious business. They've recently taken targeted action against a set of fraudulent app developers and codes that've been collecting ad bounties in ways that are ... basically just not cool. These developers in this case were guilty of App Install Attribution Abuse - which is basically like tricking companies into paying cash for app installs when they've installed no such thing.
We might simply think of gravity as the things that makes apples bop us on the head or keeps us from floating away into space. Gravity, however, is almost everywhere. It might sound like a sci-fi B movie but movement, especially accelerated ones, can spend ripple thorough the fabric of space-time, almost like electromagnetic waves. Unsurprisingly, these are called gravitational waves and, like their electromagnetic cousins, we might be able to use them to encode and transfer data over long distances in outer space.
Jigsaw is a Google company - currently operating as their own incubator unit under Alphabet. Jigsaw aims to make the internet safer, and technology safer, and to use technology to make people safer. With Intra, they've created an app that protects against DNS manipulation. This is an app for the world to access the entire internet without, for example, government censorship.
Verizon made their first-ever 5G NR call on a commercial network with a simulated smartphone device. Verizon's most recent test in the 5G space also tipped a hat to its side-news launch of 5G residential broadband service in four US markets. This Verizon 5G news came right on the heels of AT&T's big 5G announcement at AT&T Spark - they'll be expanding in a big way, too.
This morning at AT&T Spark, the mobile data company named a bunch of cities to which it planned to bring 5G data speeds. This comes on top of news that AT&T deployed its first mobile 5G cell site and expanded its 5G reach from its first 7 cities to an additional 5, all inside the year 2018. Come 2019, AT&T's reach with 5G will spread to a bunch more cities across the United States.
Google Go now reads aloud lengthy batches of text in natural language on your smartphone. This essentially allows you to listen to massive blog posts as audio while you're driving your car to work. The ability to "Listen to Webpages" is easily one of the most helpful things AI's done for the common user since Skynet. And it's far less violent in the long run, I hope.