‘ProtonMail’ Email App for iOS Launches With End-to-End Encryption

Swiss software developer and civil liberties outfit Proton Technologies saw its encrypted email app ProtonMail hit the App Store today.

The iOS app is a front end for the company’s popular free worldwide end-to-end encrypted email service, built on the back of over half a million dollars raised in a 2014 crowdfunding campaign.

ProtonMail invisibly integrates PGP encryption into a modern user interface and operates on the service’s “zero access” policy, meaning all messages are stored in encrypted format so that not even ProtonMail has access to their contents.

Illustrated example of end-to-end encryption (Image: ProtonMail)
After creating a free email account, users can send and receive encrypted emails automatically, set timers for messages to self-destruct after sending, organize emails using swipe gestures and labels, and also send password-protected encrypted emails to non-ProtonMail email addresses.

ProtonMail’s encryption service is open source and hosted entirely in Switzerland, under the protection of some of the world’s strongest privacy laws.

Last year, the Swiss Parliament passed a new domestic surveillance law that increased the country’s state surveillance capabilities and curtailed privacy rights. However, ProtonMail has concluded that the law does not negatively impact the company’s secure email service.

Boxes of signatures being delivered to the Swiss government in Bern (Image: ProtonMail)
Despite that analysis, ProtonMail joined other civil liberty groups to mount a challenge against the new law, since according to Switzerland’s democratic system, any law can be challenged by collecting 50,000 signatures within a period of three months after its passage.

Those efforts resulted in 70,000 signatures being delivered to the Swiss parliament in January. This means that at the next election, the Swiss surveillance law will be put to a public vote by the entire country.

ProtonMail was founded in 2013 by MIT engineers and CERN scientists inspired by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of government mass surveillance programs.

ProtonMail is a free download for iPad and iPhone. [Direct Link]

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Encryption
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Tim Cook Featured on Cover of TIME Magazine in New Apple-FBI Interview

Apple CEO Tim Cook will be featured on the cover of the March 28th edition of TIME Magazine in relation to the ongoing Apple-FBI debate over unlocking an iPhone belonging to deceased San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.

The print edition includes a lengthy interview with Cook, who talked mostly about widely known background details pertaining to the case, just days before Apple and the FBI are set to appear in a U.S. court on Tuesday, March 22.

Cook insists that Apple’s refusal to create a modified, less-secure version of iOS, enabling the FBI to unlock Farook’s passcode-protected iPhone using brute force, was a “labored decision” based on lengthy internal discussions.

“We had long discussions about that internally, when they asked us,” Cook says. “Lots of people were involved. It wasn’t just me sitting in a room somewhere deciding that way, it was a labored decision. We thought about all the things you would think we would think about.”

Cook said that he found out about the FBI-backed court order demanding Apple help federal investigators access data on the shooter’s iPhone through the press, and he admitted to being “deeply offended” by the government agency “talking about or lying about [Apple’s] intentions.”

“Do I like their tactics?” Cook says. “No, I don’t. I’m seeing the government apparatus in a way I’ve never seen it before. Do I like finding out from the press about it? No, I don’t think it’s professional. Do I like them talking about or lying about our intentions? No. I’m offended by it. Deeply offended by it.”

Cook likened Apple’s stance to “freedom of speech” in the U.S., which is protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“When I think of civil liberties, I think of the founding principles of this country,” Cook says. “The freedoms that are in the First Amendment, but also the fundamental right to privacy. And the way that we simply see this is, if this All Writs Act can be used to force us to do something that would make millions of people vulnerable, then you can begin to ask yourself, If that can happen, what else can happen? In the next Senate you might say, Well, maybe it should be a surveillance OS. Maybe law enforcement would like the ability to turn on the camera on your Mac.” […]

Except that it protects terrorists as well as good guys. “We get that,” Cook says. “But you don’t take away the good for that sliver of bad. We’ve never been about that as a country. We make that decision every day, right? There are some times that freedom of speech, we might cringe a little when we hear that person saying this and wish they wouldn’t. This, to us, is like that. It’s at the core of who we are as a country.”

While the FBI has argued that it only wants access to a single iPhone, Cook stressed that “it’s not about one phone” and that weakening encryption could set a dangerous legal precedent — which the FBI itself has partially acknowledged.

“It’s very much about the future. You have a guy in Manhattan saying, I’ve got 175 phones that I want to take through this process.” (The guy in question being New York County district attorney Cyrus Vance, who did in fact say that.)

The full-length interview can be read on TIME’s website and in the March 28 print issue.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: Tim Cook, Apple-FBI
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HTC shares where you can try and buy the Vive on UK high streets

HTC has shared where consumers will be able to pick up the Vive virtual reality headset in the UK. The VR system is ready for pre-order at a number of participating high street retailers. The list of retailers include the likes of Dixons Carphone, Overclockers UK and Scan Computers.

Arriving in May, you’ll be able to pop into your nearest participating store to put your name down for a unit from today, as well as take advantage of hands-on demo time. Here’s the full list of retailers:

• Currys PC World, Leeds (Birstall)
• Currys PC World, Reading
• Currys PC World, Tottenham Court Road
• Overclockers UK, Newcastle-under-Lyme
• Scan Computers International Ltd, Bolton

Each of the aforementioned stores will have a demonstration station ready to go for the public to interact with. Priced at £689 in the UK, it’s an expensive investment, but well worth it if you’re looking to take your media consumption to the next level. Be sure to check out the HTC website for more details surrounding availability in the UK.

Mickey Mouse is coming to Crossy Road

Disney and Pixar characters are about to invade Crossy Road. Hipster Whale has announced that it is teaming up with Disney to bring over 100 characters to the arcade game, starting with Mickey Mouse.

The partnership was announced at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. There’s no exact date as to when the new characters will be available, but we should get additional details soon.

What do you guys make of Disney characters in Crossy Road?

Project Cars teases its Oculus Rift experience, looks incredible

If you’re into racing, and you’re soon to be into VR with Oculus Rift, Project Cars should be on your radar. And given the latest teaser video from the developers, Slightlymad Studios, it will definitely want to be on your radar.

As you can expect, the experience inside the game on Rift will be much more immersive than that we’ve come to know so far. It’s a launch day title, so you’ll be able to jump behind the wheel as soon as you put it on.

So who’s jumping on this one?

Oppo’s R9 and R9 Plus feature astounding 16MP front-facing selfie shooters

Companies have released handsets in the past touted as “the smartphone for selfie lovers,” but none have really made jaws drop with their front-facing optics. That is, until Oppo decided to shake things up with the R9 and R9 Plus. Both smartphones feature a 16MP front-facing shooter. Yes, you read that correctly. 16MP.

What makes the R9 from Oppo even more interesting in the camera department is how the company has opted to go with just 13MP for the main rear-facing camera, while the R9 Plus has a 16MP upgrade. Other specifications include an octa-core Snapdragon 652 processor, 4GB of RAM, 4G LTE, fingerprint sensor, 2850mAh battery, and a screen to body ratio of 79.3%. If you choose the R9 Plus, your battery is upgraded alongside the camera to a whopping 4120mAh power plant.

Considering both handsets will be priced at around $500 or below in China, that’s quite the planned launch for Oppo. We can only dream that said hardware makes it outside the country and into our pockets.

Chrome for Android stops merging apps and tabs by default

Google’s browser quietly reverts to the old-style tab switcher on phones — but you’ll only see the change in a fresh Chrome installation.

In a quiet but not insignificant move, Google has changed the default way its Chrome browser handles tabs on Android phones. Since the arrival of Android 5.0 Lollipop, Chrome has let each tab display its own card inside the Overview menu. (That’s the list of cards you see when pressing the Recent Apps key.) If you wanted to go back to the old-style tab switcher in Chrome itself, you’d have to find and disable the “Merge tabs and apps” option under Chrome’s Settings menu.

As of the most recent stable build of Chrome — version 49 at the time of writing — the new default setting for “Merge tabs and apps” is off. This means if you’re setting up Chrome on a phone for the first time, you’ll start off with the old-style in-app tab switcher. If you want apps and tabs to live together in the Overview menu, you’ll need to enable this manually. Essentially, it’s the reverse of how things used to be.

Left: Merge tabs and apps, the old default / Right: Chrome’s in-app tab switcher, the new default.

The move appears to walk back one of the major changes of the Lollipop era.

The move appears to walk back one of the major changes of the Lollipop era, where Chrome took advantage of new APIs in Android 5.0 that let apps create multiple cards in the Overview menu. The result was easier switching between Chrome tabs and other apps, thought at the cost of making it harder to keep track of all your individual tabs, and a little slower to switch between them. (What’s more, that stack of cards could very quickly become a mess of old Chrome tabs.)

We’ve confirmed the change on several phones running Lollipop, Marshmallow and even the Nexus 6P on the Android N developer preview. It’s worth noting that this only applies to new installations of Chrome, or new phones being set up for the first time. That means if you first set up Chrome on an older version, then updated to Chrome 49 through the Play Store, nothing will change. (To see the change for yourself, simply clear Chrome’s app data, then restart it.)

It’s still possible to have apps and tabs live together in the Overview menu — just hit the menu button in Chrome (the three-dots icon), then tap Settings > Merge tabs and apps.

The reason for the change isn’t clear, though it’s possible Google finally decided the old apps-plus-tabs setup was just too confusing. And for what it’s worth, the change also brings Chrome on Android back in line with the iOS version of the browser.

Which tab-switching method do you prefer to use in Google Chrome? Shout out in the comments!

Best fitness trackers 2016: The best activity bands to buy today

The wearables market has really taken off over the past couple of years bringing with it a plethora of devices from smartwatches and heart rate measuring headphones to sports watches and activity trackers.

There is such a breadth of choice out there, it’s difficult to know where to start, let alone make the right decision on the one best for you. This feature rounds up the best activity trackers available to buy today and we will be updating it as we test out the latest devices.

For now, we have only included the products we have tested fully and it focuses around the wearables that are always-on and always tracking your activity, rather than those that specialise in specific activities.

For those that are after something that will count your steps and calories, monitor your sleep and perhaps even have the added bonus of reading your heart rate, you have come to the right place. Here are the best fitness wearables to consider if you want to get up, start moving and stay ahead of the game.

Click here to find the best activity tracker or fitness band out there for you.

There’s no technical reason why PS4 and Xbox One fans can’t play together, but…

A few days ago, at the start of GDC in San Francisco, Microsoft openly invited other console manufacturers to participate in its cross-platform gaming strategy; that’s Sony with its PlayStation 4, to you and us.

It is already planning on offering PC and Xbox One Rocket League players to compete against each other online, no matter the platform, and other games will follow in the same vein.

The fact that its statement suggested PS4 players could also get in on the cross-platform action excited many.

However, it seems that it won’t be anytime soon. if at all.

Even though there are few technical barriers to such a move, Sony has illustrated several other factors that could prevent such multiplayer, online harmony.

Sony Worldwide Studios boss, Shuhei Yoshida, told Eurogamer at GDC 2016 that cross-platform play could be blocked by “policy issues and business issues”. Essentially, it’s not necessarily in Sony’s best interests to allow Xbox One and PS4 owners to play together.

Cross-platform play has been adopted by some PS4 games, with the aforementioned Rocket League and Street Fighter 5 both having multiplayer match-ups across the console and PC. And Yoshida said that it is “nothing new for us” to work with developers and publishers to allow cross-platform play.

But opening that to Xbox One is another kettle of fish entirely: “Because PC is an open platform it’s much more straightforward,” the Sony executive said. “Connecting two different closed networks is much more complicated so we have to work with developers and publishers to understand what it is they are trying to accomplish.

“We also have to look at the technical aspect – and the technical aspect could be the easiest. We also have to look at policy issues and business issues as well.”

It is the latter two factors that could prove to be the nail in the coffin for the concept.

Sony won’t be making a loss on PlayStation VR hardware, even at £350 a pop

Sony has revealed that, contrary to the opinion of some analysts, it won’t be making a loss on each PlayStation VR headset sold – even though it undercuts high-end rivals by hundreds of pounds.

When the tech and gaming giant revealed that the PS VR would retail for £350 in the UK ($399 in the States) many thought that, like in the console market in the past, the company would make a loss on each device sold, opting for software sales to make profit.

Oculus has also previously suggested that its own £500 price point was very reasonable for the amount of tech crammed inside the Oculus Rift headset. That furthers the idea that a £350 price point for a similar system is lower than it costs to manufacture.

READ: PlayStation VR: Release date, specs and everything you need to know

However, Sony Worldwide Studios head, Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer otherwise. Speaking at GDC, he revealed that Sony won’t be making a loss on PS VR hardware at all.

“According to our hardware team we are not going to lose money selling PlayStation VR for the price we announced,” he said.

“That’s great news because we can invest in promotion, doing trials, developer support without bleeding money by selling the PS VR hardware.”

Pocket-lint

Yoshida explained that Sony’s vast experience as a manufacturer in technology and games equipment is a major factor in cutting costs.

“Luckily our hardware teams have been making hardware for a long time. We’ve approached PS VR development how we approach PlayStation console development – we always aim high in the quality of the experience,” he added.

“Especially because virtual reality is so new, we wanted to do it right first time. We waited until we could use cutting edge tech like 120Hz OLED displays – that doesn’t exist anywhere, we custom made it for PS VR.”

READ: PlayStation VR preview: Affordable virtual reality for the gamers

The PlayStation VR headset is now available on pre-order from several retailers and will be shipped from the beginning of October this year. It costs £350 but you will also need to invest in a PlayStation Camera accessory if you don’t own one for your PS4 already.

A couple of PlayStation Move controllers are also recommended.