How to save money on roaming fees outside the UK
Using your phone abroad can be expensive — but with a little planning, it’s easy to save a lot of money.
If you’re unprepared, using your phone overseas can add hundreds of pounds to the cost of a trip abroad, in the form of an enormous roaming bill when you return home. Fortunately, international roaming is more affordable than ever. Depending on your network and circumstances, it’s easy to keep costs to a minimum. And even if your phone is locked to a network with unfriendly roaming rates, you’ve still got plenty of options.
Let’s dive in.
Check roaming bundles before you travel
Roaming fees can vary wildly depending on which network you’re on and where you’re going. It can make the difference between being able to use your phone freely as if you were at home, or any data use being prohibitively expensive.
- Roaming on EE (including Orange + T-Mobile)
- Roaming on Vodafone
- Roaming on O2
- Roaming on Three
A few things worth noting:
- Vodafone contract customers will want to check if they’re enrolled in EuroTraveller or WorldTraveller. The former lets you use your UK allowance — including tethering and 4G where available — for £3 per day in certain European countries. The latter lets you do the same in certain countries outside of Europe, for £5 per day. Both could save you a lot of money if you’re a heavy data user.
- Three customers should check if their destination is part of the network’s “Feel at Home” area, which allows customers to use their UK allowances in certain territories at no additional cost — with a few strings attached.
- If you’re an EE grandfathered into the carrier’s “special rate” for roaming, you may get a better deal than the rates displayed on EE’s roaming site. Double-check with the network to make sure.
Disable roaming data entirely and use Wi-Fi
This is the sledgehammer option — completely kill data roaming and only connect to Wi-Fi hotspots while you travel. Settings can vary from phone to phone, but you can normally find the Data Roaming toggle under Settings > Mobile Networks.
There are a few obvious places where you might find free Wi-Fi — hotels, coffee shops, airports, train stations and the like. But if you want to take the uncertainty out of finding Wi-Fi hotspots, you might want to download OpenSignal’s WifiMapper app, which tracks more than 3 million free Wi-Fi hotspots around the world.
Disable background data
Switching off background data will stop apps using cellular data when they’re not open. Go to Settings > Data Usage and hit the menu button (three dots), then select “Restrict background data.” (On Samsung phones, simply find the “Background data” option on the Data Usage page.)
You can then use the Data Usage page to keep track of exactly how much you’ve used while you’re away.
Unlocked phone? Use a local SIM card
If your phone isn’t locked to your network, you can simply pick up a local SIM card from a carrier in your destination country after you arrive. These are often available from airports or convenience stores — and, naturally, from local carrier stores. While this can be a great option if you want to save money on mobile data, bear in mind that you might not be able to make international calls back to the UK from a pre-paid local SIM.
Services like HolidayPhone let you order a prepaid SIM for your destination country before you travel, taking some of the uncertainty out of tracking down a local SIM while abroad. You’ll usually pay a little more for a service like this, however.
SIM-locked phone? See about unlocking
Even if your phone is locked, you could still save money by getting an unlock code before you travel. In many cases, even with the upfront cost of unlocking your phone, you could save money in the long run by using a local SIM abroad.
- All phones sold on Three from the start of 2014 are SIM-unlocked. For older devices, you can use this form.
- O2 will normally unlock contract customers’ phones for free, with a few exceptions. For PAYG customers there’s a £15 charge.
- EE will unlock devices if you’ve had your contract for six months or more, or immediately if you’re on PAYG. Unlocking costs £8.99.
- Vodafone will unlock phones for free if you’ve been on contract for 12 months or more. If you’ve had your contract for less than 12 months, or you’re on PAYG, it costs £19.99.
How do you manage roaming costs while abroad? Share your tips and tricks down in the comments!
Ally Bank debit cards now work with Android Pay and Samsung Pay
If you’re an Ally Bank customer, you can now use your cards with Android Pay and Samsung Pay. Ally added support for both mobile payments platforms, noting that all debit card customers should now be able to add their cards to either platform.
From Ally:
Ally Bank, the direct banking subsidiary of Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY), today announced it has enabled Android Pay™ and Samsung Pay® support for its debit card customers, providing fast and secure ways to make purchases with compatible Android™ and Samsung devices.
If you’re an Ally Bank customer, let us know how your experience goes with adding your card to the mobile payment platforms. And for the full list of supported banks, be sure to check out the Android Pay and Samsung Pay websites for more.
Wherein we welcome Mr. Mobile the only way we know how
So we hired Michael Fisher. Maybe you’ve heard of him. And while hiring is probably the hardest part of running any sort of organization, I can honestly say that without question he’s is one of those people I’d sign on without any sort of hesitation. Do it. And so we did.
Turns out, though, that we had something different in mind for our special snowflake. Something that plays not just to Mr. Fisher’s strengths, but ticks off some of the boxes that we’re still working to fill. It’s exciting as hell.
And dude’s gonna do it everywhere. Hit up all these links ASAP.
- YouTube
- Le web
- Snapchat
So welcome, Mr. Mobile. While he’s not directly working on Android Central, or iMore, or Windows Central, or any of our other sites, our paths most certainly will cross on occasion. Let’s just hope he forgets about that little water joke.
Dropbox is adding several new and improved productivity tools
The cloud file storage service Dropbox announced a large number of new and upcoming productivity features, including creating Microsoft Office documents on mobile devices, a document scanner and more.
The company offered up some details on these new features in a blog post:
- Scan documents in Dropbox: With document scanning, you can now use the Dropbox mobile app to capture and organize scans from whiteboards, receipts, and sketches, so your ideas are right at your fingertips. Dropbox Business users can even search inside the scans.
- Create Microsoft Office docs on mobile: If your idea is better suited to an Office doc than a napkin, you can click the new plus button to create Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files instantly from your mobile device. They’ll be saved to your Dropbox automatically. “The new plus button in the Dropbox iOS app adds a convenient way to create and save Office documents on the go, helping people work better together, wherever they are,” said Rob Howard, Director of Office Marketing at Microsoft.
- Manage photos from your computer: For Dropbox Basic users who are using their phones to capture memories alongside ideas, we’re also changing the way camera uploads works. You’ll need to connect a computer to your Dropbox account so you can better access, organize, or remove your photos and avoid running out of space.
- Share files and folders from the desktop: We’re cutting steps from sharing and saving you time with our desktop sharing experience. Now when you right-click on a file or folder in your Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, you can share right from the desktop, without redirecting to the web, or copying a link to email.
- Add comments to a specific part of a file: It can be hard to make sense of all the feedback you get within emails, chat, and text. So we’re introducing a feature that’s usually only found in design software: adding comments to a specific part of a file. Give precise feedback by highlighting a piece of text or an image anywhere within a file preview.
- Preview earlier versions: Version history is an easy way to recover old files if accidents happen, or if you just want to revisit an idea. Now you can also preview prior file versions before you restore them, so you know you’ve got the right version.
- Share with more control: Sometimes you just need to work with a select group of collaborators. Our simple, yet powerful new sharing features give you more control. Now you can share a single file with specific people, who will need to log in to see it. And with view-only access for shared folders, now available for all users, you can also let people follow along.
Dropbox adds that this is just the first step in improving its productivity features and “there’s lots more to come” in this area.
Google introduces Android Basics Nanodegree program for those with no experience
Following up on the previous Nanodegree program, Google has introduced an Android Basics Nanodegree program aimed to help complete beginners. There is no experience required for this, and the program will open this fall to all Udacity students. Google will also be offering a chance to win a scholarship for the Career-track Android Nanodegree.
From Google’s announcement:
Upon completing the Android Basics Nanodegree, you also have the opportunity to continue your learning with the Career-track Android Nanodegree (for intermediate developers). The first 50 participants to finish the Android Basics Nanodegree have a chance to win a scholarship for the Career-track Android Nanodegree. You now have a complete learning path to help you become a technology entrepreneur or most importantly, build very cool Android apps, for yourself, your communities, and even the world.
It is great to see Google continuing to help people get started with developing apps and more. Would a program like this interest you? Let us know what you think in the comments.
theScore esports now keeps you up to date with competitive Call of Duty, Starcraft and more
Fans of competitive Call of Duty and Starcraft II will want to check out the latest update to theScore esports. The app now tracks matches from those franchises, along with Blizzard’s Hearthstone digital card game. The app also features a new “spoiler mode” to hides match results and alerts until you’re ready to see them.
Here’s what’s new in theScore esports:
- Call of Duty, Starcraft II, and Hearthstone now have results from the biggest and best competitions!
- Use the new spoiler mode to hide results and push alerts until you’re ready to see them!
- Fixed a bug where hitting “back” after opening the app via an alert closed the app
- Fixed a bug where Twitch links were not opening in the Twitch app
- Design tweaks and performance enhancements.
You can find theScore esports 2.2 on the Google Play Store now.
PS4’s ‘Detroit’ couldn’t have taken place anywhere else
When you set your story in a specific city, it’s a very sensitive thing to do,” said David Cage, director of the upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Detroit: Become Human. “You don’t want to do it if you’re not respectful of the place, of the people living there.” Cage’s next game with studio Quantic Dream deals with a near-future world where androids aren’t a mobile operating system for your phone, they’re “living” among us with hopes and desires of their own. Specifically? Transcending their circuitry and, as the name suggests, being human.
Detroit tells the story of several humanoid robots and is set entirely in the Motor City. Like his games Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy before it, Detroit is a narrative-based choose-your-own-adventure where the decisions you make in the story have huge ripple effects. Ultimately those could lead to main characters dying because of your actions.
As Cage tells it, the game couldn’t have taken place anywhere else. He said that the tale of an industrial titan — Detroit and its automotive manufacturing background — going through difficult times and being reborn was a natural fit for his narrative.
“Where would an android industry go? There would probably be a need for huge factories and a lot of space. I thought that Detroit would be a perfect place for that,” he said.
This isn’t the only time the eponymous city’s been used for a video game setting recently, and for the same reasons. When Deus Ex: Human Revolution was released in 2011, it used Motown as the headquarters for the human augmentation industry. Cage said that this doesn’t affect his vision for Detroit. “I don’t like to look too much at what people do at the same time,” he said.
“You don’t want to make decisions just because someone else did something a little bit like this, and then you need to find something that is not as good just for the sake of being different.”
Cage’s ‘Detroit’ doesn’t just use the city’s name as shorthand for its cultural history.
Unlike Human Revolution, Cage’s Detroit doesn’t just use the city’s name as shorthand for its cultural history. Some of Detroit’s most recognizable landmarks have appeared in trailers for the game so far. The statue of Joe Louis’ fist, downtown’s monorail system, and yes, blighted houses, are but a few examples.
For people who live in Michigan or have spent a lot of time in Detroit, it can be aggravating seeing the media paint the city as nothing more than burned out homes and abandoned buildings. A level in 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare set in Detroit transformed the city into a refugee camp, for instance.
“I can’t believe this is Detroit,” a character in Advanced Warfare quipped at one point. “It hasn’t changed that much,” said another. And that’s four years after attacks on nuclear power plants around the world had thrown Earth into chaos; 2059 in the game’s timeline. The team at Sledgehammer Games used Detroit as a lazy signpost for a destroyed city, when, honestly, a few lines of dialog could’ve been changed and the level could have taken place in an Eastern Bloc country.
Cage doesn’t want that. His team at Quantic Dream spent time in Detroit during production because he hates writing a story about a place he hasn’t been. He traveled around, visiting decrepit churches, meeting the people who are rebuilding the city and came away inspired by the energy he felt. He even made his way through the abandoned Packard Automotive plant that graffiti artists have adopted as a 3.5 million square-foot canvas since its late-’90s closure.
“It’s definitely a surreal place in many ways,” he said. “You could tell just watching the rooms and how beautiful it was one day. You can still feel it and easily imagine how it could become something incredible again.”
If Cage’s game is focused on a decline, it isn’t of Detroit, it’s of a race: humans. He said that the advances we’ve made in artificial intelligence, coupled with our penchant for violence and conflict, were a good jumping off point for his game.
The Packard Automotive plant. Image credit: The Washington Post via Getty Images
Cage believes that high-powered artificial intelligence that can walk among us is an inevitability. But, whether that will be something good or bad is anyone’s guess at the moment. Tesla and SpaceX mastermind Elon Musk, and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, think that our current trajectory could end badly for the human race. Hence their dire warnings and multimillion dollar donations to keep a Skynet-like situation from occurring.
“What I wanted to do with Detroit is take the opposite angle and not necessarily say that technology is going to be our enemy and that [androids] are going to destroy us,” Cage said. “But, rather say, ‘What if we were declining?’ What if the human race, through hate and violence, what if it was the end of a certain era and maybe the beginning of something else?”
The juxtaposition of humanity decaying and technology taking over probably wouldn’t be as effective if the game was set anywhere other than Detroit. It’s the attention to detail and reverence for Motown that Cage and his team have that rings most clear and grounds their vision of a fantastical future in reality.
“If you just come [to a city] and steal what you want to steal for your piece and just leave, that’s one approach,” he said. “But we were sincerely moved by the place, by its history, by the people we met. We wanted to be fair to them and tell a story that would work for them.”
“We love the city, honestly.”
SoundCloud serves up new music based on your listening habits
Nearly every music streaming service has a feature that gives you new music to listen to based on audio habit. Spotify has Discover Weekly, Pandora compiles a custom station and Apple Music is making recommendations a big part of its redesign for iOS 10. SoundCloud is looking to offer a similar tool with its new Suggested Tracks section. The company says the picks come from its “state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm” that keeps tabs on your likes and plays on the web and through the mobile apps. While SoundCloud doesn’t specify how often the list is updated (“frequently”), it did explain that there’s a good chance the some of the new music won’t be found on any other service.
As is usually the case with algorithms, the more you use SoundCloud, the more the recommendation engine learns about your habits. In theory, this means the picks should continue to improve over time. If you want to give the new feature a shot, it’s available through the new “Discover” tab on the web or by hitting the search magnifying glass inside the Android and iOS apps. The company warns that if you’re new to the app or haven’t used it that much, your list might be blank. Don’t worry, just get to listening so the app has a frame of reference before making its selections.
Source: SoundCloud
MacOS Sierra first look: Siri, show me the new stuff
As of last week, OS X has a new name. It’s macOS now — macOS Sierra, specifically. The newest version of Apple’s desktop operating system arrives next month in the form of a public beta, with the final build coming out sometime in the fall. All signs point to this being a less exciting release than in years past, with the most exciting features being the addition of Siri (it’s about time!), auto-unlock and the ability to copy and paste between your Apple devices. (Other additions, like automatically backing up your desktop and Documents folder, are useful though hardly groundbreaking.)
With the public beta launch still a few weeks away, I’ve already had a chance to play around with an early version of the software. It was so early-stages, in fact, that some of the headline features weren’t ready for testing. Enjoy this first look, then, but let’s agree to regroup a few months from now — there’s still a lot of ground left for us to cover.
Siri
There are a few places where you can find Siri in macOS, and each feels intuitive. For starters, you’ll find the familiar purple Siri shortcut in the Dock, right next to Finder. That lower-left corner is the same place we already expect to find Cortana on Windows 10. If you like, though, Siri also lives in the tray, in the upper-right area of the screen, right next to where the search bar already lives. Or — and this is my personal favorite — you can use the keyboard shortcut Fn-spacebar to bring it up without using your cursor. Power users will notice that’s very similar to the shortcut you’d use to bring up Spotlight search, which is command-space. It makes sense that each has a keyboard command, and that they’re similar — if you know how to do one, you basically know how to do the other.
As you’d expect, Siri handles all the same commands that it does on iOS: searching the web, setting reminders, creating calendar events, composing emails and texts, etc., etc. You can also ask follow-up questions. Say, if I asked for dry cleaners in my neighborhood, I can then narrow my search to “only on 7th Avenue.” Really, I’d expect no less of a digital assistant these days. Given that this is macOS, Siri has also been optimized to control the operating system itself, giving users the ability to search for files, change their settings and find out more about their machine (how much local and iCloud storage you have left, for instance).
Once you find what you want, be it a specific file or a baseball game schedule, you can pin the results to the Notification Center, as well as copy and paste or drag-and-drop them into a different app. You can also open files straight from Siri, though in some cases you’ll need to follow a link to Finder to see the complete results.
Picture in Picture
Sierra brings with it a picture-in-picture mode, wherein you can pop out a movie in iTunes or Safari and watch in a separate stay-on-top window. (Look for a new icon in the video player that looks like a window popping out of a window.) Because I was testing an early version of the OS, most websites didn’t yet support this feature (an API is available to developers), but I was able to take an ESPN video and watch a recap of game seven of the NBA finals, all while opening and closing other apps and windows. If the window is getting in your way, you can drag it around as well as resize it. Media controls appear when you hover over it, though in my tests I couldn’t jump forward or back to a different point in the video. When the video ends, the pop-out window automatically closes — a convenient touch.
Universal Clipboard
For a long time now, Apple’s big focus with macOS has been around “Continuity” — the ability for apps to work seamlessly across the desktop and mobile devices, with carryover in things like documents and web activity. Now, users will also be able to copy and paste between their gadgets, whether that be macOS and iOS, Macs only, or from one iOS gadget to another. As in other instances of Continuity on the Mac, you don’t actually need to set anything up; just make sure all of the devices you plan to use are signed into the same iCloud account (which, let’s face it, they probably already are).
I was initially skeptical that it would be that easy. But in fact, once I set up Sierra on two different Macs, each signed into the same iCloud account, I was able to hit command-C (copy) on one machine and command-V (paste) into a TextEdit doc on the other. Basically, it seems that Sierra is remembering your most recent copy action across all of your devices. To paste that text in, you just need to make sure you’re pasting into an app that already supports copy-paste, which, duh: of course you are.
Messages
This fall Apple fans will have revamped messages apps for both macOS and iOS 10, with features that include enlarged emoji (three times bigger than before), inline previews of videos and websites and so-called Tapbacks, which let you respond to a message by adding a thumbs-up, heart or other pictorial reaction. The fact that your reaction appears on top of the message bubble means less clutter as you scroll through a message thread.
In addition, Messages on macOS can display some of the flashy new effects that are specific to iOS 10, including stickers, handwriting, “invisible ink” and “Digital Touch.” It’s a shame you can’t actually send messages from your Mac using these effects (they were some of the most fun things we saw at Apple’s WWDC keynote last week), but at least you can see what friends are sending you from their iPhones.
iCloud and Documents
Starting with Sierra, macOS behaves a lot more like Dropbox. If you like, you can have your Desktop and Documents folder automatically upload to iCloud, so that you don’t have to manually cherrypick which files you’d like to save. Once you enable this feature (it’s not turned on by default), you’ll find the Desktop and Documents in a slightly different location in Finder: under the iCloud banner in the left-hand pane.
Optimized Storage
“Optimized storage” aren’t the sexiest words ever uttered by Tim Cook during a keynote, but this is actually a feature everyone can benefit from. (Unlike Siri, maybe?) To call it a feature — a singular word — might be a misnomer; by enabling Optimized Storage, you’re actually turning on a host of processes that work in the background to free up space on your local disk. This includes automatically moving seldom-used files and already-watched iTunes movies and TV shows to the cloud and, if you like, storing Mail attachments on the server unless you choose to download them.
The system will also automatically erase items that have been in the trash 30 days and clear your cache and logs. In addition, it flags duplicate downloads in Safari and reminds you of used application installers. Certain nonessential features, like dictionaries, instructional videos and special fonts, are now available on-demand, instead of loaded on your system by default. Heck, even the OS itself takes up less space: Apple said it worked to make the installer smaller than in years past.
Photos
Here again, we have a new macOS feature that’s also a new iOS feature. The Photos app on both platforms is getting an upgrade, with a new “Memories” view that automatically detects events in your life, based on the people in them and where the shots were taken. Thanks to “advanced computer vision,” the new Photos is also smart enough to know which of your pics contain things like dogs or snow.
Scroll through the Memories view, and you’ll see a breakdown of people and places. Take note, though: To make the most of the facial-recognition feature, you’ll need to do some preliminary legwork, tagging faces in your photo library. To be fair, Apple makes this easy by automatically surfacing some frequently featured faces, prompting you to assign them a name. Oh, and the Memories view also includes a “Related Memories” section at the bottom, so that you have Memories to go with your Memories. It’s Memory-ception, basically. And also, a rabbit-hole of vacation photos.
As you navigate away from the Memories tab, you’ll also find dedicated People and Places albums. In the People album, your subjects are ranked by how often they appear in photos, though if you like, you can mark someone as a favorite so that they always appear up top. Additionally, Albums View looks different, with rounded tiles and photo and video counts. If you’re viewing one big photo on the screen, you’ll notice that the scrubber on the bottom looks a lot like the one on iOS (pick “Show Thumbnails” from the View menu to make the scrubber appear in the 1-up layout). Also note the search bar in the upper-right, from which you can search by places, people and keywords, like “beach.” And, of course, Siri can find your photos too.
Lastly, what would a Photos update be without new editing tools? New options include “Brilliance,” which applies region-specific adjustments to brighten dark areas, and “Markup” for adding text, shapes and signatures to images. You can also edit Live Photos, a feature that I’m sure some iPhone 6s owners have been demanding. Those edits apply to both the still photo and the video. Apple is opening Live Photos editing to third-party developers as well, in case you happen to prefer a different photo editor.
iTunes
iTunes generally still feels like a bloated mess, but Apple Music at least has received a major redesign. The new UI is much simpler, marked by large headers and prominent album art. In addition to your library and the iTunes store, you’ll find three other tabs toward the top to guide your experience: “For You,” “Browse” and “Radio.” Those last two are pretty self-explanatory, but it’s worth pointing out that “For You” is a mix of personalized playlists and recommendations, along with updates from whatever artists you might be following.
Tabs
Expect to see a lot more tabs across macOS. In addition to Safari and Finder, you can also open tabs in Maps, Mail, TextEdit and the whole iWork suite. The feature will automatically work in third-party document-based apps too, with no updates required from the developer. The only stipulation is that the app has to already support multiple windows, which is why you’re seeing tabs in Maps but not, say, Messages.
It’s all pretty simple, though you do still get some options in terms of how this works. For instance, you can choose to always open new windows in tabs, which is what I personally would do. Or, you could set your system up so that new windows only become tabs if you’re already working at full-screen.
Features we can’t test yet
Auto-unlock
Once Sierra and the newly announced watchOS 3 arrive in the fall, Mac users will be able to unlock their machine using an Apple Watch. It seems like the setup is straightforward: Make sure both devices are signed into iCloud with the same Apple ID, and enable Auto Unlock in your Mac’s system’s settings. From there, so long as you’re within three meters of your Mac, you can unlock your machine simply by lifting the lid or hitting a key.
Selfishly, I wish our IT department would support this feature on my company-issued Mac so that I don’t have to type in a complex 16-character password every time I come back from a coffee break. Fat chance that’ll ever happen, though.
Apple Pay on the web
Apple Pay has been steadily expanding to include more banks and more retailers, but until now, there was a glaring blind spot: payments on the web. That changes in the fall, when some merchants will start building in an Apple Pay button. A few things need to be in place in order for this to actually happen: The retailer of your choice needs to actually support Apple Pay on their website, of course. Also, you’ll need to visit the website in Safari, not some other browser. Lastly, you need an Apple Pay-equipped device, like an Apple Watch or newer iPhone or iPad.
That last bit is important because you’ll need a secondary device to actually complete the transaction. Even after you hit the Apple Pay button in Safari, you still have to either double-click the button on your Apple Watch or enter a passcode or use Touch ID on your iOS device. For Apple’s part, the company is quick to tout the security benefits — namely, that Apple doesn’t store your credit card number on your device or Apple’s servers, nor does it save the details of your transactions. For retailers, though, there’s surely another benefit, which is that getting customers checked out faster is always a good thing (the better to enable your impulse purchases, my dear!).
At launch, we’ll see Apple Pay on Etsy, Expedia, Fandango, JetBlue, Lululemon, Nike, StubHubm Target, Under Armour, United Airlines, Conde Nast and The Wall Street Journal’s websites. Additionally, e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Demandware and IBM are working behind the scenes to enable Apple Pay for some 250,000-odd websites that are powered by their technology.
Compatibility
When Sierra comes out, it’ll be available on Macs up to 7 years old. In particular, it will run on MacBooks and iMacs from as far back as late 2009. If it’s any other kind of Mac — an Air, Pro, mini or Pro desktop — your machine needs to be from 2010 or later. Obviously too (I think this goes without saying?) to make the most out of the OS you’ll also need an iDevice. Think: an Apple Pay device for Apple Pay, a Touch ID-enabled device for auto-unlock, and an iOS 10 device to use Universal Clipboard, Memories or the new Messages on the go.
Come to think of it, to really evaluate Sierra, we’ll also need to take a look at iOS 10. Not coincidentally, both launch around the same time. Expect to hear a lot more from us then on all things Apple software.
Drug trafficker gets 20 years thanks to emails he never sent
A UK man has been convicted of 20 years for drug trafficking conspiracy thanks to Yahoo emails in draft he thought were deleted, according to Motherboard. While already in jail, Russell Knaggs devised a scheme to have an accomplice write a draft email and save, but not send it. Another partner located in Columbia would then read the draft, delete it, and write another in reply. The idea was to avoid sending emails that could be seen by cops, but the traffickers didn’t realize that Yahoo keeps the deleted drafts for a long period of time.
Yahoo forwarded the emails to law enforcement, which used them (along with other evidence) to convict Knaggs. The problem, his lawyer says, is that his collaborators deleted most of the emails from the drafts and trash, so they’re supposed to be impossible to recover. “If a user deletes a communication from his or her account, the communication becomes inaccessible to [our] proprietary tools,” says Yahoo’s Michele Lai.
If you draft up an email about something but never send it, can it really be used against you?
Because of that, Knaggs lawyer suspects that the records were found via “bulk-data gathering, live monitoring, [or] interception,” possibly by the US government (the investigation started in 2009, well before the Snowden revelations). To prove its theory, it filed a petition to force Yahoo to disclose its exact retrieval method. However, the company dismissed the “fanciful” idea, saying they were recovered from auto-saved drafts. “The evidence produced was not the product of US government surveillance, but rather was captured … using a Yahoo proprietary tool in response to ordinary legal process, even though [Knaggs] and his co-conspirators thought they had deleted the evidence.”
It does bring up another interesting point — if you draft up an email about something but never send it, can it really be used against you? It kind of reminds us of a certain film where people are busted for just thinking about “pre-crimes.” Check out more on the story at Motherboard.
Source: US District Court, Motherboard
AIVAnet 