FCC Demands AT&T Refund $7 Million in Unauthorized Charges by Scammers
The FCC’s enforcement bureau announced today it has reached a settlement with AT&T that will see the carrier pay $7.75 million for allowing scammers to charge thousands of customers approximately $9 per month for a sham directory assistance service.
AT&T has agreed to issue full refunds to all current and former customers who received unauthorized third-party charges from January 2012 onwards. The refunds are expected to total $6.8 million, while AT&T will also pay a $950,000 fine to the U.S. Treasury.
The scam was uncovered by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration while investigating two Cleveland-area companies Discount Directory, Inc. (DDI) and Enhanced Telecommunications Services (ETS) for drug-related crimes and money laundering. During the investigation, DEA officials discovered financial documents related to the scam that primarily targeted small businesses.
AT&T received a fee from the companies for each charge AT&T placed on its customers’ bills. Although DDI and ETS submitted charges for thousands of AT&T customers, they never provided any directory assistance service. Neither DDI, ETS, nor AT&T could show that any of AT&T’s customers agreed to be billed for the sham directory assistance service. Phone companies like AT&T have a responsibility to ensure third-party charges are legitimate and were approved by the consumer.
AT&T is required to cease billing for nearly all third-party products and services on its wireless bills, and can only reinstate charges of that kind with express informed consent from customers. The carrier also must revise its billing practices to ensure that third-party charges are clearly identified on bills, and offer a free service for customers to block third-party charges.
In 2014, AT&T similarly agreed to pay $105 million in fines and refunds for unauthorized third-party subscriptions and premium text messaging services. T-Mobile also reached a $90 million settlement with the FTC, which accused the carrier of “cramming” unauthorized SMS subscriptions like horoscopes on bills. The FCC has taken more than 30 enforcement actions against carriers for related cases since 2011.
Tags: FCC, AT&T
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New ‘Pokemon Go’ Update Adds Driving Warning, Changes ‘Nearby’ Into ‘Sightings’
Niantic has today updated Pokemon Go to version 1.3, bringing several improvements, tweaks and fixes to the game. The main addition is a dialogue option for users who may be playing while driving, while the “Nearby” feature has been transformed into “Sightings” as the developer continues work on testing a new tracking system.
If players are going over a certain speed, the game will now warn them that they’re moving too fast. To continue playing, users have to click a button that tells the app that they’re a passenger and not a driver. Throws have also seen improvements, with the curve ball throw receiving accuracy adjustments while the “Nice,” “Great” and “Excellent” throws now receive the appropriate experience from the game.
The game’s “Nearby” feature has also been changed into “Sightings.” The new feature, which Niantic says it is testing with a subset of users, points out Pokemon that have been sighted in the area. Behind illustrations of nearby Pokemon are illustrations of grass. Unlike before, tapping on a singular Pokemon does focus on a single Pokemon. In last week’s Pokemon Go update, Niantic disabled the vague and difficult-to-understand “three steps” tracking mechanic.
Other minor changes and fixes include art for the Mystic, Insight and Valor team leaders , the ability to change a user’s nickname, a fix for achievements that were showing incorrect medal icons and a fixed and re-enabled battery saver mode.
Pokemon Go is available in the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Tag: Pokémon GO
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Apple Removes Fake Bitcoin Wallets From App Store After Users Scammed
Fake Bitcoin wallet apps are routinely leaking through Apple’s App Store vetting process, leaving users’ accounts at risk of being compromised and their coins stolen.
That’s according to developers of the Breadwallet app, who estimate that fake wallets in the App Store have already lost users of the digital currency up to $20,000.
The suspect apps were first identified by the company in a post on Reddit, warning users that at least eight fake wallets on the App Store were using the same, or very similar, names to existing official mobile wallet apps.
The scam apps appeared to be aping portions of source code, icons, and graphics from legitimate apps to fool users into thinking they were using official wallets.
Breadwallet discovered a fake version of its own app which was added to the App Store on July 29, using the same name and icon as the official version. The company took immediate action and contacted Apple to remove the offending app, after customers inadvertently downloaded the fake and reported stolen funds.
“We talked with one customer who claims to have lost about $10,000, and if we go and look at the coin address where those coins were deposited, last I checked there was $20,000 listed at that address,” said Breadwallet co-founder Aaron Voisine, speaking to Motherboard. “So, that’s our current estimate for how much customers have lost.”
Apple has since removed the offending apps listed by Breadwallet, but their appearance on the App Store has left Bitcoin wallet developers and users questioning the robustness of Apple’s vetting process for financial apps.
“I think it would be good for Apple to go through some extra process to make sure they have the identity of the person posting any app in the finance section,” Voisine said.
Founder of SSL security certificate company BlackCert, John Casaretto, told SiliconANGLE that the Application Development Signing Certificates, the Apple Developer Program, and the application review process had all been negated by a handful of malicious apps making it onto the Store recently.
“For a long time, it seemed as though Apple’s tight controls over its ecosystem were a fairly impenetrable measure against nefarious applications, malware, and junk,” said Casaretto. “Clearly that is not the case anymore.”
Tag: bitcoin
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Alleged iPhone 7 Plus Geekbench Results Reveal 2.37 GHz Dual-Core A10 Chip, 3GB of RAM [Updated: Fake]
An image claiming to show Geekbench test results for an iPhone 7 Plus reveal a 2.37GHz dual-core ARM processor and 3GB of RAM for the device.
The picture, originally posted to Chinese microblogging site Weibo and picked up by Dutch site Techtastic.nl, depicts single- and multi-core results for an iPhone model with the identifying hardware string “iPhone9,2”. For comparison’s sake, an iPhone 6s Plus has a 1.84GHz dual-core A9 chip, 2GB of memory and the hardware string “iPhone8,2”.
If the results are legitimate, a single-core score of 3548 and multi-core score of 6430 show that Apple’s 16-nanometer A10 processor easily beats the performance of the A9 in the iPhone 6s Plus, which scores 2490 and 4341, respectively.
On these results, the A10 also outperforms the 2.2GHz A9X chip powering the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which returns Geekbench scores of 3224 and 5466, respectively.
Last week, a DigiTimes report claimed the iPhone 7 Plus will carry 3GB of RAM, supporting two previous claims by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo saying the same thing.
The DigiTimes report stopped short of specifying whether the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 model would also get 3GB of RAM, but it’s worth noting that the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus both had 2GB of RAM, although Apple could restrict the 3GB to the larger device this time around to differentiate them more.
The image is just the latest in an increasing number of leaks coming out of Chinese websites in recent weeks, suggesting users with links to Apple’s supply chain. On Monday, a user of microblogging site Weibo posted images allegedly depicting iPhone 7 logic boards before the device chips had been added.
Apple is expected to reveal both the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone 7 at a media event next month.
Update: Primate Labs founder John Poole has said the Geekbench results are fake.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: A10 chip
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‘Stranger Things’ Poster Began as Sketch Created With iPad Pro and Apple Pencil
In a recent interview with Mashable, an artist based in the United Kingdom, Kyle Lambert, divulged his process of creating the memorable poster art for Netflix’s science fiction series Stranger Things. Netflix asked the artist to keep with the 80’s theme of the show, and provided him with a vague plot outline, rough cuts of only the first few episodes, and some still shots “to communicate the story in a single image.”
Ultimately, Lambert said he decided on the iPad Pro for the project because the tablet lets him “sketch in a very natural way,” especially when used in conjunction with the Apple Pencil. He used the Apple device in the sketching process of the main poster art that has gained fame online in the weeks since Stranger Things launched in July, but Lambert has also been known to create impressive art on iPads over the years, particularly in a photorealistic representation of Morgan Freeman he created on an iPad Air in 2013.
“This was a very exciting project for me, as an artist that trained with oil paints, I really enjoyed the challenge of reproducing this traditional painting style using digital tools,” Lambert told Mashable.
“I used the iPad Pro to do the preliminary composition ideas and the sketch that became the final Stranger Things poster. I chose to use the iPad Pro for the drawing stage of the poster because I find that I am able to sketch in a very natural way on the device using the Apple Pencil. The device in general is nice to hold for long periods of time, it is really portable and Procreate, the app that I used, has some really great Pencil brushes for drawing with.”
Specifically, on the iPad Pro Lambert used the iOS app Procreate to assist in his drawing process, and then he transitioned to Photoshop on the Mac to upscale the image to a higher resolution so he could “paint small elements at the best possible resolution.” During the coloring process, the artist used an Intuos Wacom tablet — which connects to a Mac to act as a sketch pad — so he could “focus on as much of the image” as he needed, without his hand obscuring a piece of the artwork like it does when using the iPad Pro/Apple Pencil combo.
The original sketch that eventually became the final Stranger Things poster
The process wasn’t particularly straightforward, however, as Lambert describes moving back to the iPad Pro to “add layers of detail to areas” that he thought needed “a more fluid sketch style” that the desktop didn’t grant. He went back and forth between the two devices and applications several times to ultimately give the Stranger Things poster its finished, recognizable look. Lambert was also commissioned to work on several character portraits to serve as gifts for actors, specifically those of Sheriff Hopper, Eleven and Dr. Brenner, and various still shots from iconic moments in the 8-episode series.
Ever since early adopters began getting their hands on the iPad Pro and its companion stylus, the Apple Pencil, talented artists have shared what they can do with the technology in MacRumors’ own discussion forums. Apple has remained adamant that the Apple Pencil is a drawing-enhancement tool, and “will absolutely not replace the finger as a point of interface” on the tablet, so it’s interesting to see how much the technology has grown and been used, and on such a highly professional level, in under a year of its availability.
Related Roundup: iPad Pro
Tag: Apple Pencil
Buyer’s Guide: 12.9″ iPad Pro (Neutral)
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Apple Working on New Health-Tracking Hardware for 2017
Apple is developing at least one new health-tracking product that could debut alongside the tenth-anniversary iPhone in 2017, according to Economic Daily News (via Mac Otakara).
Exact details are hard to discern from the translated Chinese-language report, but Apple is said to have invested two years of R&D into the new product in it health laboratories overseen by Apple’s health and fitness director Jay Blahnik.
While entirely new hardware is possible, the product could realistically be a next-generation Apple Watch. The product is said to have an array of health-related apps that collect data such as heart rate, pulse, and blood sugar changes.
Health and fitness has been a focus for Apple in recent years with ResearchKit, HealthKit, and the Apple Watch. In a recent interview, when asked what he believes the “next frontiers” will be when it comes to product development, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted health as “the biggest one of all.”
Tags: udn.com, health and fitness
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Foxconn Developing Glass Casing and OLED Displays Ahead of Tenth-Anniversary iPhone
Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn is developing glass casings and OLED displays for smartphones in an attempt to secure orders for the tenth-anniversary iPhone next year, according to Japanese website Nikkei.
The report claims Foxconn has been developing glass chassis for at least one year, and developing its own OLED display technologies through its Sharp acquisition. It would be competing with Samsung, and China’s Biel Crystal and Lens Technology, to win orders.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple will switch to non-aluminum casing, with glass being the most likely candidate, for the majority of new iPhone models in 2017. Kuo and multiple other sources also expect next year’s iPhone to have a thinner and lighter OLED display in a move away from LCDs. Earlier reports said Samsung would be a primary supplier of OLED panels for future iPhones.
Samsung’s Galaxy S7 sets the benchmark for OLED-based smartphones, and makes a strong case for Apple’s rumored shift towards the display technology. iPhones have used various LCD display technologies since the original model launched in 2007, but OLED panels are often thinner, brighter, and more energy efficient than their LCD counterparts. The technology, however, can be more expensive to produce.
Apple’s tenth-anniversary iPhone is shaping up to be a significant upgrade, compared to the relatively incremental refresh expected from this year’s iPhone 7. The rumored switch to glass casing and OLED display will mark the first major overhaul of Apple’s smartphone since the iPhone 6 launched in late 2014, given that this year’s iPhone is expected to retain an iPhone 6s-like design.
Related Roundup: iPhone 8 (2017)
Tags: Foxconn, nikkei.com
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YouTube iOS App Removes Apple’s Obtrusive Volume Indicator in New Update
YouTube has removed the large, default volume indicator from its iOS app, letting users effectively toggle sound controls up and down while in a full-screen video without having to worry about the translucent UI obscuring most of the content. The removal came in version 11.30 of the YouTube app, which began rolling out yesterday. Any time the app is in portrait mode, the regular indicator will still appear.
YouTube’s new volume rocker can be located at the top of any full-screen video on iOS
The obtrusive volume indicator has been an annoyance for many iOS users over the years, since it usually blocks the most crucial aspects of a video when it pops up. The UI is system-wide, so it shows up most places a video is played on an iPhone or iPad — Photos, for example — and has been a mainstay in third-party apps as well. Still, many of Apple’s first-party apps include a more inconspicuous volume toggle that appears in a widescreen menu along with play, pause, and video scrubbing controls, like in Trailers and Videos.
Thankfully, over the years, some of these third-party apps have managed to combat Apple’s UI choice with volume toggles of their own. Snapchat began using its own alternative about a year ago, in the form of a line of thin rectangles at the top of the screen that grow bolder or lighter when users increase or decrease the volume. Instagram’s version is more in line with YouTube’s now, with a simple black line that indicates soft and loud volume from the left to the right.
The volume indicator for Snapchat (top) and Instagram (bottom)
In an earlier beta release of iOS 10, some users noticed that the volume UI was gone from the new version of iOS when watching videos, believing its complete removal could possibly be Apple’s response to user frustration. However, in subsequent updates the square-shaped HUD has returned, so it appears that the company won’t be moving to change this particular part of its mobile operating system when iOS 10 launches in the fall.
Along with the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements, the new update also introduces thumbnails when users scrub through videos on iOS so they can easily find specific scenes. YouTube is available to download for free from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Tag: YouTube
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New Semiconductor Processes Offer Power Efficiency Opportunities for Apple Watch
One of the key challenges for Apple in developing the Apple Watch was figuring out how to maintain acceptable battery life for the device in the face of power-hungry components such as the main processor and display.
With watchOS 3 introduced at WWDC in June, Apple showed off the ability to allow multiple Apple Watch apps to remain active and refresh in the background, acknowledging that its initial approach to managing power and other system resources was conservative but that real-world experience had shown the device could handle more demanding tasks.
In addition to software improvements, future generations of the Apple Watch will need to become more efficient on the hardware level, with new versions of the S1 chip that serves as the brains of the device being a primary target for improvement. With that in mind, we’ve taken a technical look at what the future could hold for semiconductor technology as it relates to battery-limited devices like the Apple Watch.
As transistors begin to reach their physical size limits in modern semiconductor processes, it becomes more difficult, and thus more expensive, to make them smaller. In addition to the cost per transistor no longer shrinking, it also becomes more difficult to control waste power, or leakage. New transistor geometries such as non-planar “3D” FinFETs are becoming popular to address device leakage, but as wearables such as the Apple Watch have begun generating consumer interest, the gains seen in these semiconductor processes are simply still not enough.
For a wearable device such as the Apple Watch, controlling power usage while the device is idle in standby mode is critical to keeping the overall battery life competitive. The need for ultra low power and cheaper silicon processes that are also performance competitive have made way for transistors made with more traditional lithography techniques with higher substrate costs.
The leading candidate technology of this variety is fully depleted silicon-on-insulator, or FD-SOI. FD-SOI technology innovates on traditional “bulk” transistors (seen in Apple devices prior to and including the A8) in two main ways. The first improvement is that the ultra-thin channel on top of the insulating body eliminates the need to dope the channel with additional positive or negative charge carriers, eliminating a source of device variation which can hurt performance optimization. The second improvement is that the insulating body and other characteristics drastically reduce leakage current.
The additional benefits of this process lie in the ability to dynamically control the transistor switching performance by way of biasing the transistor body. This can also be done in traditional bulk type semiconductors, but at the cost of impacting leakage performance. In the case of FD-SOI transistors, the effect is that the performance of the transistors can be modulated in real time.
Modern chips already feature multiple forms of dynamic frequency and voltage scaling (DVFS), but the ability to control FD-SOI transistors is even greater through the use of forward body biasing. Transistors can be dynamically controlled to switch faster by modulating the amount of voltage that must be applied to the device gate to effectively form a channel to operate the transistor.
This dynamic control between forward and reverse body biasing means that the transistors can be operated at extremely low voltages, near the threshold point. Operating at as little as 0.5V, power use can be drastically reduced as device power is often directly correlated with the square (or cube) of applied voltage.
The reason this technology is significant for wearables is because the main system on a chip (SoC) can play such a large part of the device’s power consumption, particularly when most usage is idle, as shown in the Android-based example to the right. Reviews have shown that the wrong SoC can absolutely kill a smartwatch’s battery performance. The other large factor in a smartwatch’s battery usage would be the screen – a component where Apple is much more at the direct mercy of its vendors to provide an acceptably performing product.
Rapid design turnaround from Apple’s processor groups, in addition to simultaneous launches of the A9 SoC on competing FinFET processes, show that Apple has the technical bandwidth to commit to introducing an additional design process into its mixture. In fact, we know that the original S1 SoC featured in the debut Apple Watch was manufactured on Samsung’s 28nm LP process, in contrast to the leading 20nm process which would have been available at the time.
It is not unreasonable to think that Apple could make a somewhat lateral move to adopt Samsung’s 28nm FD-SOI process, which is available now. Further down the road is the possibility of a 22nm FD-SOI process, and the technology will no doubt continue to grow if the market proves the demand as time goes along.
FD-SOI also has tremendous promise for analog and RF circuit applications due to its low leakage characteristics. It would not be a surprise to see RF front-end suppliers such as Qualcomm adopt FD-SOI for their modem and multi-band amplifier applications, and should Apple’s hiring of engineers with RF expertise ever come to fruition, it would be a suitable candidate for more custom parts directly from Apple. In any event, do not be surprised if analyses of the next Apple Watch have a few surprises in store when the teardown firms get their microscopes out.
Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 2, watchOS 3
Tag: FD-SOI
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Caution)
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Android Launchers: How to install, change and customise your phone
One of the best, and most often cited, advantages of having an Android device is that you can customise the way it looks. But if you thought the most you could do with it was change your wallpapers and widgets, you’re in for a treat.
By downloading new launchers on to your phone, you can change the way the entire interface looks. And – depending on which launcher you install – you can even change things as minute as individual app icons.
How to choose an Android launcher
Before choosing a launcher, it’s worth considering what you want from your Android phone. If you have a device from a Chinese manufacturer like Oppo or Huawei – or a heavily skinned device like one of LG’s – and you just want a more stock Android-like experience, the best launcher to download is probably the Google Now launcher.
The Google Now launcher brings a visual experience which is much more like the stock/standard Android look and feel. You’ll likely still have the odd flair of the default software lurking around, like in the settings menu or the drop-down notification drawer, but your home screen and app drawer will change.
But, if like so many others you just want to be able to control every element of your phone’s software experience, you will probably want Nova Launcher. It comes as both a free and premium version, the latter gives you many more options and is definitely worth the outlay if you just want your phone to look the way you want it to.
Nova Launcher lets you do things like change the size of your home screen icons manually, as well as installing custom icon packs so you can change the way they look too. You can choose how many rows and columns of apps you want on the home screen and in your app drawer, and even fine-tune the way the Google search bar appears. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, Nova Launcher is so in-depth, it could probably do with its own entire explainer and tutorial feature, so we’ll leave that there for now. Sufficed to say, if you like toying and customising, there are few that offer the granular options Nova Launcher includes.
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Download an Android launcher
The first step to installing a new launcher is exactly the same as downloading an app. Simply head to the Google Play Store and search for the launcher by name (list of suggestions at the bottom of this post) or simply type “launcher”. We’ll use the Google Now Launcher as an example in this guide, but the same process applies to all. Of course, if you have a Nexus or Moto device, you already have this launcher installed as default.
Once you’ve found the launcher you want to download and you’ve installed it, the next step is setting it up. Most Android launchers have a setup guide included to help you get started quickly, so simply tap on the launcher’s app icon, which should have appeared on your home screen. If it hasn’t, check the app drawer, where all your other apps live.
When you tap the app icon – depending which phone you’re using – you may see a popup message saying something like “X launcher is currently set as your default, go to settings to try [new launcher name]”. Once you’ve confirmed you want to try it, your home screen look should completely change.
Often when this happens, you haven’t actually set the new launcher as a default, so it may be confusing when you press the home button and it reverts back to your old launcher. Which it may do. Your phone could either do that, or give you a handy popup asking you which launcher you’d like to use as a default.
Change default Android launcher
Actually setting the launcher as your default launcher is a process which varies a little depending on your device. With some Android phones you head to Settings>Home, and then you choose the launcher you want. With others you head to Settings>Apps and then hit the settings cog icon in the top corner where you’ll then options to change default apps.
Others like Huawei make it a little trickier. Using the EMUI software from Huawei as an example, you head to Settings>Apps then tap “advanced” on the bottom bar and select “Default app settings”. On the next screen you’ll see a list of all the apps you can set defaults for, select “Launcher” and choose Google app, or which ever other launcher you downloaded.
Oppo, similarly makes it a less than intuitive procedure. In its ColorOS system, you head to Settings then find Additional settings>Default application>Home.
What next?
As we alluded to earlier, once you actually have the launcher active on your phone, the home screen appearance changes. Your apps will most likely no longer be organised how you had them before, so you’ll need to spend a few minutes (okay, maybe more than just a few) placing your apps, creating folders, choosing a wallpaper etc.
You can also gain access to your launcher settings, to customise various aspects of it. With many of them, you just tap and hold on the home screen and there’s a settings bar right next to the usual wallpaper and widgets options, you may even seen an icon pack option (depending on which launcher you’re using).
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What Android launchers are there?
There are a number of decent launchers for Android, each of them offering something a little different to the rest.
Google Now Launcher
Offers a simple, clean stock Android experience.
Nova Launcher
Customisability at its best. You can change almost any aspect of your phone software experience.
Microsoft Arrow Launcher
Very clean launcher which intelligently sorts your most used apps and frequently contacted people to make them easy to get to. It also gives you individual home screens for your reminders/tasks, widgets, documents and apps.
Yahoo Aviate Launcher
Yahoo’s launcher is similar in premise to the Arrow launcher from Microsoft. Its aim is to make your most-used features easy to get to. It also gives you a Google Now-like run down of information you need to know for the day. This include directions to get you home, recommended nearby restaurants, weather forecasts in favourite locations and more.
Action Launcher
Like Nova Launcher, Action launcher gives you the ability to customise a number of user interface elements within the software. It is Perhaps more appealing to those with little patience to set their home screens up again though, since it can import your existing app/home screen layout, rather than force you to start again.
Other launchers like Go Launcher, Buzz Launcher, Solo Launcher, Smart Launcher and Apex Launcher all offer the ability to customise the appearance of the phone’s theme, icons, and some even add custom gestures for launching specific functions.
Which one is the best depends entirely on what you need it to do. If you have the patience, and want to try a few different launchers out, you have the freedom to do that. Most are free to download, some have “Prime” versions which are paid-for upgrades, but come with more features.
AIVAnet 