A judge has ordered Amazon to refund the parents of children who made in-app purchases on Kindle and Android devices without their consent between 2011 and 2014. Seattle-based Judge John Coughenour ordered the firm to run the refund process for 12 months beginning in January 2017. It follows successful legal action by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). However the FTC’s call for a...
Google has denied the way it handles its Android mobile operating system is anti-competitive. In 2015, the European Commission said it would investigate whether Google “abused its dominant position” and “hindered the development” of rivals. Google argued Android was a “flexible” platform that had “expanded competition” rather than hurting it. The European Commission told the BBC it would carefully consider Google’s response before making...
The Linux kernel today faces an unprecedented safety crisis. Much like when Ralph Nader famously told the American public that their cars were “unsafe at any speed” back in 1965, numerous security developers told the 2016 Linux Security Summit in Toronto that the operating system needs a total rethink to keep it fit for purpose. No longer the niche concern of years past, Linux...
Google’s mobile security team has definitely been busy cleaning house this week. The company has released an Android update that closes two security holes that could pose a major threat if intruders found a way to exploit them. The first was only designed for “research purposes” and would only have been malicious if modified, Google tells Ars Technica, but it wouldn’t have been hard...
Not all of the big Android phone makers have announced their plans for the Nougat update, but if you look at Sony’s and Google’s and HTC’s official lists (as well as the supplemental lists being published by some carriers), you’ll notice they all have one big thing in common. None of the phones are more than a year or two old. And while this...
It’s official: No Android Nouget. That is, if you run the Nexus 5 and 2013 Nexus 7 won’t receive the Android 7.0 Nougat update from Google today. The update will roll out to the Nexus 6, 9, 5X, 6P, the Pixel C tablet, the Nexus Player, and the General Mobile 4G (an Android One phone that has been included in the beta program), but...
Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for since March when Google unexpectedly dropped the Android N developer preview on us. Android 7.0 Nougat, as it’s now known, is officially done and rolling out to Nexus devices, the Pixel C, and the General Mobile 4G. There aren’t any big surprises here—the final build is virtually identical to the last developer preview, but it should...
Google has been hit by a $6.75 million antitrust fine in Russia for requiring phone manufacturers to preinstall its apps on Android mobile devices. The majority of smartphones and tablets solid in Russia run on Android, and domestic search engine rival Yandex filed a complaint last year that the US company was abusing its position. The fine itself is small — less than what the...
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have identified a weakness in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) of all Linux operating systems since late 2012 that enables attackers to hijack users’ internet communications completely remotely. Such a weakness could be used to launch targeted attacks that track users’ online activity, forcibly terminate a communication, hijack a conversation between hosts or degrade the privacy guarantee...
Yes, we know. Our smartphone batteries are bad because they barely last a day. But it’s partially our fault because we’ve been charging them wrong this whole time. Many of us have an ingrained notion that charging our smartphones in small bursts will cause long-term damage to their batteries, and that it’s better to charge them when they’re close to dead. But we couldn’t be...
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