Google’s Allo messaging app might be sharing your searches

Why it matters to you

Google’s Allo messenger isn’t the best at keeping secrets, as a tech reporter recently discovered.

Allo, Google’s mobile messaging app, may be sharing more with friends and family than it’s letting on. That’s what Recode writer Tess Townsend found out the hard way in a recent conversation with a friend.

Google’s Assistant is to blame, it seems. The AI-powered virtual secretary, which serves up everything from movie showtimes and flight statuses to reminders and trivia, has an unfortunate habit of pulling up old Google search results.

More: The Google Assistant can now call up personal info via Allo

Townsend invoked the Assistant in a conversation with a friend, and observed it responding to a question with a non sequitur link from Harry Potter fan website Pottermore — a result related to previous searches the friend had performed a few days earlier.

The result wasn’t from Townsend’s own search history, and it wasn’t mentioned in the course her conversation with the friend. She speculates it was inadvertent — the result of a bug, likely.

Equally alarming is Allo’s inconsistent treatment of personal and sometimes sensitive information. When Townsend asked the Assistant “What is my job?” in the aforementioned conversation, it responded with a Google Maps image showing an address she’d saved in a private setting. But when Townsend later in the conversation asked the Assistant “What is my name,” it privately asked if it could share it.

More: Everything you need to know about Google Assistant

The Assistant’s errant exchanges weren’t particularly damaging in this case, Townsend acknowledged, but could have implications beyond Allo. Google recently introduced a new bot, @meet, that facilitates meetings between colleagues in the company’s new Hangouts Chat app for G Suite customers. It would needless to say be problematic if the @meet bot began sharing personal scheduling details, for example, or revealed a calendar appointment meant to be kept private.

It could be related to Allo’s personal reminders feature. In February, the Google Assistant gained the ability to store contacts, calendar appointments, airline reservations, phone numbers, and more with a simple query. Typing “@google” (without quotes) in an Allo conversation pulls up the Assistant, and tapping on the Assistant icon shows all the information it has on hand. A subsequent Share option lets you share the information with another chat participant.

“We were notified about the Assistant in group chats not working as intended,” a Google spokesperson told Digital Trends. “We’ve fixed the issue and appreciate the report.”

More: Pixel phones, Daydream, Home — Oh my! Everything Google revealed at its October 4 event

This is not Allo’s first privacy kerfuffle. Advocates took issue with its lack of end-to-end encryption, a security feature that would protect the content of conversations from electronic eavesdroppers, and Google’s Allo chat log retention policy (messages are stored indefinitely until a user chooses to delete them).

Close to the Metal Ep. 34: Quantum Computers are finally landing, but it’s still early

While chip manufacturers struggle to push their architecture into small silicon wafers, and see only 10 percent performance improvements as result, IBM has its sights set on the next big thing — quantum computing. No longer a pipe dream, the IBM Q is an actual quantum machine that businesses can use for data sets normally unmanageable by standard systems.

In fact, quantum systems are so different from the desktop sitting next to your monitor that IBM still don’t have a clear way of benchmarking or comparing the capabilities of different quantum systems. In Digital Trends’ interview with IBM CTO and VP of Quantum Computing Scott Crowder, he made it clear “This is not the ‘60s or ‘70s, this is the 1940s. We’re still in the very early days; we’re still driving a lot of the basic fundamentals, at the same time that we’re trying to make the systems accessible to a wider group of people.”

Enter IBM Q. Rather than just sell off these futuristic machines to partnered researchers and companies, IBM is working with them to ensure that each specific need is met, and to provide an upgrade path as the technology becomes more substantial. Before you can create mass-market machines for big data and neural networks, you need to identify the problems machines like that are likely to solve.

More: It’s the 1940s again: IBM’s Scott Crowder on the infancy of quantum computers

We’ll sit down and dig into one of the most mysterious and headache-inducing elements of modern computing, and attempt to make sense of IBM’s move into this new world, on this week’s Close to the Metal.

Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that focuses on the geekier side of life. It tackles the topics PC enthusiasts argue over in language everyone can understand. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com. We broadcast the show live on YouTube every Tuesday at 1pm EST/10am PST.

Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

Everyone likes apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers make paid apps free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money, and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged. 

More: 200 Awesome iPhone Apps | The best Android apps for almost any occasion

Wireless Drive

Why clutter up your key ring by carrying a physical USB drive around wherever you go? This simple, convenient app converts your iOS device into a wireless hard drive that works over Wi-Fi.

Available on:

iOS

RecApp

RecApp is the most advanced voice recording app on the App Store. It includes a set of special features for those who use their iPhones for professional activities.

Available on:

iOS

Coyn

Coyn is all about efficiency. Experience the most unique user interface and enjoy managing your cash. Simply swipe up to add expenses and swipe down to add income.

Available on:

iOS

Hyp

Hyp (for hypnotize) is a new relaxation app. Interact with hypnotic visuals, soothing animation, and responsive music.

Available on:

iOS

PhotoTangle

PhotoTangler Collage Maker is a powerful image app that instantly turns your favorite photos into beautiful collages. It allows you to blend them together in unique and creative ways.

Available on:

iOS

Typography

Typography Insight is a toolkit for learning and teaching typography. Now you can access thousands of fonts from Adobe Typekit with Adobe ID.

Available on:

iOS

Windows Creators Update to improve Defender’s detection and response

Why it matters to you

An ever vigilant Windows Defender is an important part of Windows security, so Microsoft’s actions in keeping it updated should help keep us all safe.

Microsoft is continuing to update its Windows Defender platform and will issue a big overhaul to some of its functions in the upcoming Creators Update. Specifically, it will improve the ways in which the anti-malware software detects, investigates and responds to a range of threats from different actors.

Along with Windows Firewall, Windows Defender is seen by many as the baseline of defense for a Windows-based PC. It can go hand in hand with third-party antivirus and anti-malware products, but Windows Defender is the first and last step in protecting many millions of systems the world over. So, keeping it updated and capable of tackling the latest threats is rather important.

In the Creators Update, Microsoft will update its ability to detect memory and kernel intrusions, where typically attackers could hide from traditional detection methods. Microsoft claims to have already leveraged this ability to prevent new zero-day attacks on Windows and has used machine learning to counter the changing trends in attack vectors.

Customers can even add in their own indications of intrusion to augment the detection dictionary.

More: Top 5 Android security apps: Do they protect you?

Opening up the anti-malware process to consumers is a major part of the changes Microsoft is making in the Creators Update. When it comes to threat investigation, Microsoft has added a “single pane of glass across the entire Windows security stack.” In essence, everyone will be able to see what Windows Defender is doing: what it’s blocking, what it’s quarantining and what it’s keeping an eye on.

All of that will be available within a single view to make it easier for security teams to analyse potential and historic threats to the system. This should enable a deeper understanding of the types of attacks coming in, which makes it easier for security professionals and end users to prevent further attacks in the future.

IT managers will be able to look at up to six months of logs for an entire organization’s cloud-connected systems, to provide historic context for any studied attacks.

Giving those same security professionals additional power to combat ongoing attacks, Windows Defender’s update response system will give them manual controls for isolating machines, banning certain files from the network, and killing and quarantining certain processes or files.

All of that and more will be added as part of the upcoming Creators Update. If you’d like to try it out now, you can start a free trial with the Advanced Thread Protection system today.

Spotify and Waze team up to make beautiful music together

Why it matters to you

Want a little Spotify in your Waze? Your wish is the companies’ command.

Waze, the world’s largest crowdsourced navigation app, is joining forces with Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, to rock your ride. On Tuesday, the services announced a partnership that will see Spotify’s features integrated natively into the Waze app for smartphones.

In a forthcoming update, users will see a new Spotify option within Waze. Once they have typed their credentials and signed in, they’ll gain access to their playlists and pop-up descriptions of playing tracks. Waze’s new playback controls will skip, pause, or change the playing song without the need to launch Spotify. And a new shortcut will quickly switch between the Waze and Spotify apps.

More: Stephen Colbert and other celebs are coming to Waze this September

The integration goes both ways. When users hop to the Spotify app while Waze is running in the background, they’ll get a truncated version of the next navigation instruction. The integration is rolling out to Android users worldwide over the next few weeks, and to Waze’s iOS app soon after.

The partnership comes as something of a surprise. Google, which purchased Waze for $1.1 billion in 2013, has its own Play music-streaming service that competes with Spotify, But Waze hasn’t been shy about reaching out to third-party partners in the past.

More: Waze’s Connected Citizens program could turn Sunday drivers into traffic-sensing allies

In 2016, it debuted the Waze Transport SDK, a software development kit that lets partners integrate with Waze’s routing and guidance data. Ride-sharing service Lyft became one of the first to use it last year, along with U.K. emergency dispatch company Genesis Group, JustPark Parking, Cabify, 99Taxis, and food delivery service Cornershop.

Last year also saw the launch of Waze’s Global Event Partner Program, which saw the company team up with event organizers to help with logistics planning. Partners get access to Waze Closure, a tool that lets them input scheduled delays, restrictions, lane reversals, parking locations, and road closures ahead of time.

And Waze has dipped its toe in other ventures, too. In February, Waze expanded Waze Carpool, a ride-sharing tool that matches riders with carpoolers in areas where bus and transit routes don’t normally reach. It’s active in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, Israel.

More: Looking to navigate the Rio Olympics? Check out the new update from Waze

But the expansions haven’t come at the cost of new in-app features. In recent years, Waze features tapped the vocal talent of high-profile names like New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, How I met Your Mother’s own Neil Patrick Harris, and comedian Steven Colbert for spoken-aloud turn-by-turn directions. In June 2016, Waze added a “difficult intersections” feature that suggests alternative routes around intersections with higher-than-average accident rates. And more recent updates added alerts about hit-and-runs and kidnappings and reminders for parents not to leave children in hot cars.

Get the best possible 3D Blu-Ray experience with your PlayStation VR

Your PlayStation VR can play 3D Blu-Rays! So, now what?

Sony has added a feature to the PlayStation VR setup that you’re either going to use every chance you get or not even once, depending on how you watch movies. Added in the latest update was the ability to watch 3D Blu-Ray movies through the headset with no additional settings or features. You just put the disc in, put the headset on, and the 3D effects start immediately. As long as you’re down with watching a movie by yourself and having the headset on for 90-120 minutes at a time, this is a great feature to have.

It works reasonably well too, considering you’re using the PlayStation VR Cinematic Mode to watch a movie on a 1080p display and you aren’t actually using all of the pixels to begin with. But a lot of this experience depends on how you have your current PSVR settings applied. If your goal is to really enjoy this experience, you’re probably going to want to tweak a few settings.

Read More at VR Heads!

Speed up your home Wi-Fi with discounts on select TP-Link gear today only

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time helping you make your Wi-Fi faster for less!

If you’ve been looking for some new networking gear, you’ll want to check out Amazon’s Deal of the Day which discounts a variety of TP-Link’s products. From gigabit ethernet switches to network extenders and Wi-Fi routers to cable modems, there is a deal here for just about everyone.

With these prices, today is a great day to stop renting your existing modem from your cable company and start owning yours. Most cable companies charge around $10 per month to rent the modem from them, and today you can have your own for as little as $60 (which means it pays for itself in just 6 months!).

Some of the best deals include:

• TP-Link N300 Cable Modem – $59.99 (normally $79.99)
• TP-Link TC-7620 Cable Modem & $20 Amazon Gift Card – $67.99 (normally $89.99)
• TP-Link AV1000 Gigabit Powerline Adapter – $39.99 (normally $49.99)
• TP-Link AC1200 Wi-Fi Range Extender – $37.99 (normally $44.99)
• TP-Link AC5400 Wi-Fi Router & TC-7620 Cable Modem – $253.99 (normally $319.98)
• TP-Link 5-Port Gigabit Ethernet Smart Switch – $19.29 (normally $29.99)

Be sure to check out the full list of products that are on sale as well to see if any of the others will work for you.

See at Amazon

For more great deals on tech, gadgets, home goods and more, be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

Levi’s will sell its Google-powered connected jacket this fall for $350

Levi’s, in collaboration with Google’s ATAP division, is finally going to put its connected jean jacket on sale this fall.

Two years ago, at Google I/O 2015, Google unveiled a project that it called Jacquard. The idea was simple: use existing fabrics like cotton, nylon, polyester and silk as conduits for touch gestures, using a tiny computer and a Bluetooth radio to transit information to a phone.

At the time, Project Jacquard was just a prototype, but a year later, during 2016’s iteration of Google’s developer conference, the company announced a collaboration with Levi’s — the seminal denim maker — to create a commuter jacket that would accept input.

The jacket, which accepts swipes and taps to do things like change songs on a playlist or turn on connected lights, will cost around $350 when it goes on sale this fall. And while it’s the first such commercialized product to come out of Google’s ATAP branch, it is unlikely to be the last. The potential for connected clothing is enormous, and with the miniaturization of computers and other necessary sensors, the actual aesthetic impact will be minimal.

Other companies, like Montreal’s OMsignal, have already developed and begun selling connected sportswear, mainly to track things like heart rate and other vital functions. Jacquard appears to have a more mainstream outlook, with the goal of selling regular people, not just high-intensity athletes, on doing things without pulling out a phone or tapping on a smartwatch screen.

The eero Home Wi-Fi System is impressively easy

Before there was Google Wifi, there was eero.

We’ve looked at several home Wi-Fi products here at Mobile Nations. They are an important part of using your phone or any internet-connected device, so they’re pretty relevant for all of us. And with consumer mesh networking hardware becoming a thing, it’s also some really cool new tech. Even Google is on board and Google Wifi is one of their best products to date.

Mesh networks are perfect for many of us because of how they’re setup and the way they work just where they’re needed. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to blast Wi-Fi out from a big central router when you only need it in a few spots and need it to be fast in those spots. Modular systems put really good Wi-Fi right where you need it.

Router vs Mesh Networking: What’s best for your home Wi-Fi network?

Let’s talk about how eero does it.

The hardware and setup

Eero sells its router system as a single pack, a two-pack, or a three-pack. We tested the three-pack for a week or so in a home office situation where the internet rarely sleeps. We took it out of the package and just started hooking it up according to the simple instructions and didn’t do anything “special” to get ready.

Each eero unit is a compact square box about 5 inches per side and 1.5 inches tall. They’re powered by a dual-core 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM and have a 4GB partition for flash storage. Eero says you should use a unit for every 1,000 square feet you want to be covered, so it’s nice to see them sold in a pack of two, as well as a single pack and three-pack.

If you look at the back of each, you’ll find a proprietary power port, a tiny recessed reset switch, a USB 2.0 port, and two auto-sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports for wired connections. Everything is manufactured very well and there are no gaps or rough edges on the seam where the top shell meets the base.

One thing eero does well in its three-pack box is mark the units so you know which you should start with. This allows some factory pre-programming for routing and pathing and eliminates that long wait time while Google Wifi is setting itself up. Little things like this make a product feel friendly, and something like a mesh Wi-Fi installation is going to feel pretty foreign to a lot of people no matter how easy it is.

Key specifications

• MU-MIMO dual-band (2.4GHz / 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/n/ac wireless support
• 1GHz dual-core CPU with 512MB of RAM
• USB 2.0 service connection
• Bluetooth Smart ready
• 2 auto-sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports
• WPA2 personal wireless encryption
• DHCP, NAT, VPN passthrough, UPnP, Static IP, and Port Forwarding.

And the setup is easy. That’s one of the things we love about Google Wifi. The eero app does the same things but presents it all to you a little better. Again, it’s a more friendly feeling that most companies try to make happen and eero nails it.

When you lift the first unit out of the box (it’s marked with a blue sticker that says “Start”) the packaging underneath tells you how to get started. You have to see it because it covers the power supply and amazingly well-built Ethernet cable that comes with each unit. Basically what it tells you to do is to grab the eero app for your phone.

Download: eero – Home Wi-Fi System from Google Play

With the app installed, you’re directed to plug in that first unit and let your phone talk to it to get everything set up. All you need to know for this is what you want to name your network and what the password will be. Next, you move to the second unit and plug it in, and the eero app will tell you if the connection between them is good or if you should move the unit closer or somewhere without structural interference.

Of course, the third unit is set up the same way. You do everything through the eero app, and the app is very well done and designed for people who aren’t networking engineers or even hobbyists.

How does it work?

I placed my units in the same place I have them with my “permanent” Google Wifi setup: one in my basement office connected to a Motorola cable modem, one in the living room directly above my office, and one in the master bedroom.

I’m also using the wired connection on each unit, one to a desktop computer, one to a hub for a Hue bridge and entertainment system and one directly to a television in the bedroom. I’ve got nothing fancy going on here and think of this as a way any typical household would use an eero system.

The network speeds are great. They’re great everywhere from top to bottom and even in the bathroom behind a wall filled with wires and copper pipes. This is exactly what anyone would expect from an expensive Wi-Fi setup and eero does not disappoint. Anywhere in my house or on my porch, my internet speeds are very close to what I see from a wired desktop. I’m not losing anything from my ISP and my LAN speeds are exactly what I would expect from a 5GHz ac network.

Part of the reason why is eero’s “TrueMesh” technology. Unlike some of the competition, eero is very straightforward about how they mesh units together. And it’s the way they should be meshed.

Network speeds were fast and all my stuff loved eero’s Wi-Fi.

Each unit supports simultaneous 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac wireless on a dual-band Wi-Fi radio. One of these radios is used the same way your Wi-Fi router uses its radio now: it communicates with the various devices (it’s a 2×2 MIMO path if you’re keeping score at home) you use to get on the internet. The other radio is a separate channel used to communicate between each node so your data speeds aren’t reduced by 50% for each “hop” away from the internet point-of-entry.

We’re not knocking whatever magic some other companies use to get similar results, but it is nice to see eero being straightforward about how they do it.

Again, we want to stress that no home networking product can make your internet speeds faster. That’s between you and the company you pay for monthly service. What they can do is make the wireless network between the internet and your laptop or phone or tablet faster so you don’t lose any speed.

Ask AC: Do I really need a mesh network?

That’s where products like eero shine. You get everything positioned to cover the places you want or need Wi-Fi and the connection back to your internet modem is just as strong on one side of your house as it is on the other. As long as you use enough units for full coverage you won’t have any dead spots and the network logic takes care of keeping you connected to the strongest signal which is usually the closest unit.

Network features

The eero app is really well done, as we mentioned earlier. Not only is the initial setup easy and friendly, but the “advanced” features and tools are perfect for most homes and easy to use.

You get plenty of information about the devices connected to the network, as well as the devices that make up the network. You can see how many devices are connected, how strong the connection is for each, which eero node they are connected to, and network information like MAC and IP addresses for each. There are even some statistics like when a device was last connected and for how long.

You can also get the serial number, location, OS version, Wi-Fi SSID, and MAC address for both ethernet ports on every individual eero unit in your network. This information could come in handy if you had to call for support, and if you don’t need to know any of it, it’s hidden and doesn’t affect any of the other tools you might need.

There are features most people won’t use but they’re out of the way and everything just works as-is.

Those tools are geared towards what you might need in an average home. The basics are there: family profiles, guest network controls and at-a-glance status for each eero unit. These are presented in a way where you don’t have to know how they are done on an IP network with a wizard-style interface. That’s perfect because these are the tools most people will need.

Other tools in the Advanced category include basic ISP settings, DNS settings, DHCP controls, UPnP and port forwarding. Everything is configured as automatic with UPnP on by default, so people who don’t need to use these settings can ignore them and everything just works.

For people that do want to use them, they all work as advertised. That means if you forget to turn UPnP back on, none of your Chromecasts will work and you might spend 45 minutes trying to figure out why …

A nice bonus for many is eero’s Alexa skill. Once set up with your Echo, you can pause/start your Wi-Fi network, turn the status LED on or off for each eero unit, and find your connected devices based on which eero station they are connected to. These work as advertised, though the “find my phone” feature is more a gimmick than a feature because it only finds which node is closest to your lost device.

The best thing about all of this is that eero is quick on keeping the software updated. That means things can stay secure while eero continues to work well and add new features. Automatic and frequent software updates are a must unless you like flashing things yourself.

The flip side is that you need to use an app and have an online account to set up and use an eero system. We think that’s a worthy trade-off for people who might need a company with a team there to keep everything up-to-date and offer support. But you might not. This isn’t unique to eero and I can’t find anything that makes me feel like eero isn’t taking very good care of your information.

But they do gather some information. Before you buy anything or sign into anything you should visit their policy page and see what they collect. You also need an Android or iOS device with its own data connection to go through the setup process — one that’s in the U.S.A.

Should you buy this thing?

This is tough.

I really like what eero is doing here. Having used several modular mesh Wi-Fi products from various companies, I think eero is the one I like the best.

The application and setup procedure is one of the best examples of making something accessible to everyone by ditching the tech-jargon. You can tell this was a conscious effort and it deserves the recognition. An eero kit is something my mom could set up, and she is my litmus test.

Is extra polish worth it to you? It is to me.

Another thing I like about eero is having a few proper network controls. While it’s still not as flexible as some other routers, the network tools I really want are there. Sometimes you need more than just a checkbox for these kinds of settings.

But a three-pack of eero is about $100 more than a Google Wifi three-pack or an Amplifi system, both of which work great and I can highly recommend.

Anyone who buys an eero system is going to have great Wi-Fi everywhere in their house, and the extra $100 isn’t a bad trade for the attention to detail we see in the app and the fine-tuned switching the network programming offers. You won’t be buying something like this very often so there’s no reason to automatically get the model that’s less expensive. I really want to say eero is worth the higher price but know that’s difficult for most people to justify. It just has more polish than Google Wifi. Is extra polish worth it to you? It is to me.

See at Amazon

You should definitely buy this Android-powered iPhone case

This is definitely not going to end badly for you.

Let’s assume that a few people actually reading this article have an iPhone in their pocket. Perhaps it’s in addition to an Android device, or maybe it’s just a curiosity thing. But let’s suppose.

If you are such a person, I definitely recommend you invest in the Eye, a Kickstarter project that turns your iPhone into an Android phone.

Eye attaches to the back of any iPhone 6 or 7 model — regular-sized and Plus — and adds what amounts to an Android phone (in both power and thickness) to Apple’s flagship phone. It’s the ultimate troll.

Powered by a MediaTek Helio P20, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a 2800mAh battery, the Eye sells itself on being everything the iPhone is not: flexible, open, and supportive of accepted standards like wireless charging, NFC and an open app store. It even has a headphone port as the ultimate middle finger to the iPhone’s minimalist approach.

Here are the reasons Eye’s creators, ESTI Inc., think you should buy one:

I rest my case. You should definitely back this incredibly compelling product.

The Eye ships in August or September, and backers can grab the Super Early Bird price of $95. It retails for $189.

See at Kickstarter