Parents and schools across Greystones adopt voluntary ‘no-smartphone code’ in bid to curb peer pressure
On the principle of strength in numbers, parents in the Irish town of Greystones have banded together to collectively tell their children they cannot have a smartphone until secondary school.
Parents’ associations across the district’s eight primary schools have adopted a no-smartphone code to present a united front against children’s lobbying.
Continue reading...A prototype craft that will fly network telecoms starts trials with north Wales mountain rescue services next year
Drones circling above the peaks of Snowdonia, providing an airborne mobile network in remote areas, may soon become a feature of the region’s mountain rescue operation.
The drones – like small unmanned gliders but with twin engines – would carry equipment providing 4G and 5G connectivity that would link mountain rescue teams and other emergency services with people stranded, lost or injured in remote hills where the mobile phone signal is often patchy or nonexistent.
Continue reading...Move taken against background of China’s Covid lockdowns and geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington
Apple has begun making iPhone 14s in India, as it moves some production away from China for the first time against a backdrop of Chinese Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns and geopolitical tensions between the US and the country’s communist government.
A production line in Chennai has begun operation, assembling the iPhone 14 for the domestic Indian market. The move, which marks the first time the company has assembled iPhones outside of China in the same year they were released, is part of a plan to disentangle its manufacturing operations from the Chinese state.
Continue reading...New regulations require scam messages to be traced, identified and blocked and for information to be shared with authorities
Mobile phone companies could face up to $250,000 in fines for failing to comply with a new code to block SMS scam messages.
The code, registered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) on Tuesday, will require the companies to trace, identify and block SMS scam messages, and publish information for customers on how to identify and report scams.
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Continue reading...Communications industry peak body and watchdog sees telcos block more than 549m scam calls since inception of code
Phone scam calls have halved since this time last year, data from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch shows, but other investment frauds – including on social media and via text messages – have soared over the same time period.
The Reducing Scam Calls code was introduced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) in December 2020. It has seen telcos block over 549m scam calls since its inception.
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Continue reading...A draft bill also requires companies to use a freephone number available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
Exasperated by hanging endlessly on the telephone to speak to a human being at a call centre? Spain aims to end the anguish by requiring companies to respond to customers within three minutes.
The government has approved a draft bill setting the three-minute limit and giving consumers the right to speak to a person, not a chatbot, the consumer rights minister Alberto Garzón said on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Move brings Ottawa into line with intelligence allies that have excluded Chinese tech firms from cutting-edge phone networks
Canada says it will ban Huawei and ZTE from the country’s 5G network, a move that puts it in line with intelligence-sharing allies, but risks further chilling relations with China.
The federal government made the announcement on Thursday afternoon after signalling for months it intended to block China’s flagship telecommunications companies from accessing 5G networks in Canada.
Continue reading...Paz Estaban told committee spyware was used on 18 Catalan activists with judicial approval, sources say
The Catalan government is calling for answers “from the highest level” after the head of Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) reportedly confirmed that 18 members of the regional independence movement were spied on with judicial approval.
The apparent admission – to a congressional committee – came two weeks after cybersecurity experts said at least 63 people connected with the Catalan independence movement had been targeted or infected with Pegasus spyware, and three days after the Spanish government said the phones of the prime minister and the defence minister had been targeted with Pegasus.
Continue reading...LightBasin hackers were able to obtain subscriber information and call metadata, says CrowdStrike
At least 13 phone companies around the world have been compromised since 2019 by sophisticated hackers who are believed to come from China, a cybersecurity expert group has said.
The roaming hackers – known as LightBasin – were able to “search and find” individual mobile phones and “target accordingly”, according to CrowdStrike, a group regularly cited by western intelligence.
Continue reading...Free software upgrades for iPhone, iPad and Watch improve notifications, Safari, FaceTime and more due for release
Apple plans to release software updates for its iPhone, iPad and smartwatch on Monday, which will add new features for compatible devices.
Announced at the firm’s developer conference in June, iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and WatchOS 8 bring new ways to deal with notifications, tools to keep work and home life separate, the ability to FaceTime video call with non-Apple users and more.
Continue reading...The iPhone maker may be set to break market records, but it’s starting to look more and more like a one-gadget pony
If Apple is to become the world’s first three-trillion-dollar company, the iPhone will play a key role in that feat. The tech firm unveils the latest iteration of its signature product on Tuesday, and the success of the iPhone 13 will determine how quickly Apple goes from its current market capitalisation of just under $2.5tn (£1.8tn) to $3tn.
“We believe Apple is on a trajectory to hit $3tn by early 2022 and the iPhone 13 will be a lynchpin of growth,” says Dan Ives of investment firm Wedbush Securities.
Continue reading...Billed as the most secure phone on the planet, An0m became a viral sensation in the underworld. There was just one problem for anyone using it for criminal means: it was run by the police
The rain pattered lightly on the harbour of the Belgian port city of Ghent when, on 21 June 2021, a team of professional divers slipped below the surface into the emerald murk. The Brazilian tanker, heavy with fruit juice bound for Australia, had already crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but its journey wasn’t halfway done as the divers felt their way along the barnacled serration of its hull. They were looking for the sea chest, a metallic inlet below the water line, through which the ship draws seawater to cool its engines. Tucked inside, they found what they were looking for: three long sacks, each wrapped in a thick black plastic bag and trussed with black and white striped nautical rope.
The sacks were heavy. Each one weighed as much as a sheep and, shaped like a body bag, could feasibly have contained one. As the Belgian police opened the first bag, a stack of crimson bricks slid out. Had this cargo reached Australia, where high demand and meagre supply has pushed the price of a kilo of cocaine to eight times its equivalent cost in North America, the haul would have been worth more than A$64m (£34m).
Continue reading...Transmission beams can be reconfigured from the ground, whereas most commercial satellites are hard-wired before launch
The world’s first commercial fully reprogrammable satellite has been launched, ushering in a new era of more flexible communications.
Unlike conventional models that are designed and “hard-wired” on Earth and cannot be repurposed once in orbit, the UK-engineered Eutelsat Quantum allows users to tailor it almost in real-time.
Continue reading...Tory MP Tom Tugendhat raises concerns about deal in light of global computer chip shortage
The UK’s largest producer of semiconductors has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia, prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips.
Nexperia, a Dutch firm owned by China’s Wingtech, said on Monday that it had taken full control of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK’s largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles.
Continue reading...Setting means iPhone users can stop advertisers following their digital lives – to the ire of Facebook
Users of iPhones can now prevent advertisers tracking them across their apps, after the release of the latest software update from Apple introduced the controversial feature despite the protests of Facebook and the advertising industry.
The update, iOS 14.5, includes a setting called “app tracking transparency”, which for the first time requires applications to ask for users’ consent before they are able to track their activity across other apps and websites.
Continue reading...Mobiles are now a luxury in world’s fifth most costly place for data as cooking oil tax adds to rising prices
Hundreds of people have taken to Malawi’s streets to protest against rising mobile call and data charges.
There were demonstrations in Lilongwe, the capital, in the city of Blantyre, and in the southern district of Mulanje on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Whether talking to family, friends or strangers, calls hardly ever end when both parties are ready
So you just called to say “I love you” – but how long should you stay on the phone?
New research suggests no matter who we’re talking to, or what we’re talking about, conversations rarely conclude when the two individuals want them to end.
Continue reading...After investors caused havoc on the markets last week in a battle over the shares of a video-game chain, we explore the promise and pitfalls of the apps they used
A year ago shares in struggling US video game store GameStop were worth just $3.25 a pop, yet at the end of last month they had reached $482. This stupendous surge was created by thousands of armchair traders, organising themselves on internet forums such as Reddit, who were attempting to outwit hedge funds who had placed massive bets on the chain’s decline in a process known as short-selling.
This has resulted in billion-dollar losses for some hedge funds, and big profits for traders who cashed out before the stock fell back to less than $100. Many of these speculators were using a new generation of share-trading apps, such as eToro, Robinhood and Trading 212. Have these services tipped the scales of financial power in favour of the little guy? Here we answer some key questions …
Continue reading...Security expert claims Chinese surveillance may have affected tens of thousands of Americans
China appears to have used mobile phone networks in the Caribbean to surveil US mobile phone subscribers as part of its espionage campaign against Americans, according to a mobile network security expert who has analysed sensitive signals data.
The findings paint an alarming picture of how China has allegedly exploited decades-old vulnerabilities in the global telecommunications network to route “active” surveillance attacks through telecoms operators.
Continue reading...With its iPhones, watches and forthcoming smart glasses, Apple’s gadgets are increasingly becoming extensions of our minds and bodies. It’s the big tech dream – but could it turn into a nightmare?
By Alex Hern
Illustration by Steven Gregor
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Apple engineers embarked on a rare collaboration with Google. The goal was to build a system that could track individual interactions across an entire population, in an effort to get a head start on isolating potentially infectious carriers of a disease that, as the world was discovering, could be spread by asymptomatic patients.
Delivered at breakneck pace, the resulting exposure notification tool has yet to prove its worth. The NHS Covid-19 app uses it, as do others around the world. But lockdowns make interactions rare, limiting the tool’s usefulness, while in a country with uncontrolled spread, it isn’t powerful enough to keep the R number low. In the Goldilocks zone, when conditions are just right, it could save lives.
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