Tag: smartphones

Apple Tells Support Staff To Remain Silent On iPhone Radiation Concern

Apple plans to issue an over-the-air update in the coming days for iPhone 12 users in France after regulators ordered a halt in sales over concerns the device emits too much radiation. 

“We will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators,” Apple told Reuters in a statement. 

The company continued, “We look forward to iPhone 12 continuing to be available in France.”

Earlier this week, French regulators ordered a ban on iPhone 12 sales after a Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) test – how much radio frequency is absorbed into a body from a device – exceeded European radiation exposure limits. 

Besides the iPhone 12’s radiation levels, another controversy is brewing as Bloomberg said Apple instructed employees to stay ‘mum’ when customers ask about the radiation issue: 

If customers inquire about the French government’s claim that the model exceeds standards for electromagnetic radiation, workers should say they don’t have anything to share, Apple employees have been told. Staff should also reject customers’ requests to return or exchange the phone unless it was purchased in the past two weeks — Apple’s normal return policy.

Customers asking if the phone is safe should be told that all Apple products go through rigorous testing to ensure that they’re safe, according to the guidance.

Apple dismissed the radiation claims, indicating “this is related to a specific testing protocol used by French regulators and not a safety concern” for customers. “The ANFR [French regulator] is preparing to quickly test this update,” Noel Barrot, France’s digital affairs minister, told Reuters. 

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France Demands Apple Take iPhone 12 Off Market Immediately as it Emits Too Much Radiation

French regulators ordered Apple to stop selling the iPhone 12, saying it emits electromagnetic radiation levels that are above European Union standards for exposure. The company disputed the findings and said the device complies with regulations.

The French government agency that manages wireless communications frequencies issued the order after the iPhone 12 recently failed one of two types of tests for electromagnetic waves capable of being absorbed by the body.

It’s unclear why the phone, which was released in late 2020, didn’t pass the agency’s latest round of tests and why it was only that particular model.

France’s digital minister said the iPhone 12’s radiation levels are still much lower than levels that scientific studies consider could harm users, and the agency itself acknowledges that its tests don’t reflect typical phone use.

The National Frequency Agency on Tuesday called on Apple to “implement all available means to rapidly fix this malfunction” for phones already in use and said it would monitor device updates. If they don’t work, “Apple will have to recall” phones that have already been sold, it said.

The agency recently tested 141 cellphones and found that when the iPhone 12 is held in a hand or carried in a pocket, its level of electromagnetic energy absorption is 5.74 watts per kilogram, higher than the EU standard of 4 watts per kilogram.

The phone passed a separate test of radiation levels for devices kept in a jacket or in a bag, the agency said.

Radiation limits are set “well below the level at which harm will occur,” and therefore a small increase above the threshold “is unlikely to be of any health consequence,” said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at the U.K.’s Royal Berkshire hospital group.

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Thousands of Russian officials to give up iPhones over US spying fears

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Russian authorities have banned thousands of officials and state employees from using iPhones and other Apple products as a crackdown against the American tech company intensifies over espionage concerns.  The trade ministry said that from Monday it will ban all use of iPhones for “work purposes”. The digital development ministry as well as Rostec, the state-owned company that is under sanction by the west for supplying Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, have said they will follow suit or have already introduced bans. The ban on iPhones, iPad tablets and other Apple devices at leading ministries and institutions reflects growing concern in the Kremlin and the Federal Security Service spy agency over a surge in espionage activity by US intelligence agencies against Russian state institutions. “Security officials in ministries — these are FSB employees who hold civilian positions such as deputy ministers — announced that iPhones were no longer considered safe and that alternatives should be sought,” said a person close to a government agency that has banned Apple products. A month after President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, he signed a decree demanding that organisations involved in “critical information infrastructure” — a broad term that includes healthcare, science and the financial sector — switch to domestically developed software by 2025. The move reflected Moscow’s longstanding desire to make state institutions switch away from foreign technology. Some Russian analysts suggested the current edict will do little to assuage suspicions that western intelligence agencies are able to access sensitive information on Russian government activity.

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Feds May Need Warrants To Search Cell Phones at the Border After All

The role of smart phones as snitches is well-established, with people paying for their handy communications capabilities while the treacherous devices track us and reveal details of our lives. Even as the government spoofs cellphone towers to locate phone users, or purchases commercial data about our movements, border agents also insist they can, at will, search the phones of Americans returning home. But last month a federal judge ruled that a free pass to probe electronic devices is too broad, and that Americans enjoy some protections at the border of the sort they have elsewhere.

In this latest case, United States v. Smith, Jatiek Smith, the subject of a federal investigation, was stopped at the airport in Newark on his return from Jamaica. As detailed by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, federal agents “forced him to turn over his cellphone and its password. They reviewed the phone manually and created and saved an electronic copy of it as it existed as of that date and time – all without a search warrant.”

Wait. No warrant? Unfortunately, yes.

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Consumer Group Warns Smartphone Facial Recognition Apps Are Vulnerable to Spoofing

Smartphone face biometrics from many leading brands are vulnerable to spoof attacks with 2D photographs, according to a new report from UK-based consumer testing and review group Which?, according to Yahoo Finance UK.

The group says the vulnerability is “unacceptable,” and has “worrying implications” for user’s security.

On-device biometrics are used for device unlocking and local authentication, while KYC processes for customer onboarding and strong remote identity verification is typically carried out with server-side biometrics and other signals, with a layer of liveness or presentation attack detection.

The phones tested include Honor, Motorola, Nokia, Oppo, Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi handsets. Apple’s 3D FaceID biometrics were not fooled by the photos. The devices tested range in price from £89.99 to nearly £1,000 (approximately US$112 to $1,244), but the majority of phones that failed the test are lower-cost or mid-range models.

Out of 48 new smartphone models tested, 60 percent were not vulnerable to spoofing with a photograph.

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8 ways your phone is tracking you that you can stop now

You understand that your phone knows where you’re located.

This is how GPS works, how Find My Friends sees your location, and why you get local ads on Facebook and Google.

Like other data on your phone, that location data is a hot commodity for internet marketers in today’s digital economy.

Targeted advertising is one of the biggest enterprises on the web.

Companies are eager to serve you ads for products you’re likely to buy, and that data helps them hit their mark.

Some companies have even made this their primary business model. Tap or click here to see one shocking way Facebook tracks your data.

Thankfully, you don’t have to stand for this kind of data collection if you’re uncomfortable with it.

These tactics are legal because the companies behind them give you a choice to opt in or out, but not everyone knows how to change the settings.

We’ll show you how to stop your phone from tracking you.

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Massachusetts Department of Public Health SECRETELY Colluded With Google To Auto-Install Contact-Tracing SPYWARE On Your Phone

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is facing a class action lawsuit after colluding with Google to repeatedly auto-install contact-tracing spyware on the smartphones of over a million Massachusetts residents without their permission or consent.

According to a class action lawsuit filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan nonprofit civil rights organization, the Department of Public Health rolled out the contact tracing app it worked with Google to create in April 2021.

“The App causes an Android mobile device to constantly connect and exchange information with other nearby devices via Bluetooth and creates a record of such other connections. If a user opts in and reports being infected with COVID-19, an exposure notification is sent to other individuals on the infected user’s connection record,” the NCLA explains in the complaint, Wright v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Initially, the app which obtains users private locations and health information was voluntarily installed.

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Saudis Use Orwellian App to Identify Dissidents, Imprisoning Some for Decades

Saudi Arabians are using a mobile app sold by both Apple and Google to snitch on their fellow citizens for dissenting against government authorities. As a result, activists and others are going to prison for more than 30 years in some cases, Business Insider reported on Friday.

On August 16, Saudi national Salma el-Shabab, a PhD student at Leeds University, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets “in support of activists and members of the kingdom’s political opposition in exile,” the report said. Though the posts were made while she was in the UK, el-Shabab was nonetheless reported through the “Kollona Amn” app and immediately arrested upon returning home. 

“Every day we wake up to hear news, somebody has been arrested, or somebody has been taken,” Real, a Saudi women’s-rights activist using an alias, told Insider.

Kollona Amn – which roughly translates to “We Are All Security” in Arabic – was launched by the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2017, but the last few years have seen a “dramatic” surge in court cases referencing the app, according to legal-rights activists.

The app “encourages everyday citizens to play the role of police and become active participants in their own repression. Putting the state’s eyes everywhere also creates a pervasive sense of uncertainty – there is always a potential informant in the room or following your social media accounts,” said Noura Aljizawi, a researcher at Citizen Lab, which focuses on threats to free speech online.

The Orwellian nature of the app is such that users often report on people “defensively,” fearing they could face punishment themselves for merely overhearing speech deemed offensive to the regime. In some cases, the app has also been used for “blackmail” and to “settle scores,” Insider noted.

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Feds Accessing Location Data from Millions of People Through Private Brokers

Big Brother is tracking your location with the help of private data brokers.

According to a recent report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), data brokers harvest location data from mobile apps and then sell it to government agencies including state and local law enforcement, ICE, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.

Many of the apps on a mobile device track and record location data. These include navigation apps, social media apps, and weather apps, among many others. According to EFF, once a user gives an app permission to access location data, it typically has “free rein” to share it with just about anybody. Government agencies take advantage of these loose standards to purchase troves of location data relating to millions of individuals from data brokers.

“Once in government hands, the data is used by the military to spy on people overseas, by ICE to monitor people in and around the U.S., and by criminal investigators like the FBI and Secret Service.”

There is a tangled web of companies buying and selling data in this multi-billion-dollar industry. According to the EFF report, it’s virtually impossible to determine which apps share data. But apparently, a lot of them do. Data broker Venntel, a subsidiary of Gravy Analytics, claims to collect location data from over 80,000 apps.

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