Tag: data

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Cottage Life

Starlink launches new Maritime plan for internet access at sea

Photo by kravik93/Shutterstock

This article first appeared on MobileSyrup and it has been shared with permission. To see the original article, click here.

Oceanbound Starlink customers can now access a new “Maritime” plan offering 50GB of data at sea.

The plan costs $329 a month in Canada and there is an additional one-time hardware cost of $3,170. According to Starlink’s website, it provides coverage to “boats of all sizes” and offers download speeds of 220Mbps.

The 50GB of data counts as “priority” data and includes access while at sea. Once customers use all the priority data, they can access unlimited data on inland coverage, such as on lakes and rivers, wherever the company’s services are available.

Starlink says customers will be able to purchase additional priority data with ocean access through their account at a later date.

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Mobile Syrup

Android apps will need to let users delete their accounts and data

Soon, Android apps that let you make an account will also have to let you delete the account and its data from both the app and website.

According to a blog post on the Android Developers Blog (via Engadget), Google hopes to create “a more intuitive experience” and ” better educate our shared users on the data controls available to them.”

Along with providing the option to delete your account and data, developers will need to wipe data for an account when users request the account be deleted. And the web requirements are intended to help ensure users don’t need to reinstall an app just to delete their account.

The policy won’t come into effect right away, though. According to the blog, developers will have until December 7th to answer questions about data deletion in apps’ safety forms, and Play Store listing will start showing the changes in early 2024. Developers can also file for an extension until May 31st, 2023.

It’s worth noting Apple made a similar change with the App Store a couple of months ago.

The move to require account and data deletion is part of a wider concern about privacy violations and, as Engadget notes, perhaps a response to growing regulatory efforts in the U.S. to give consumers control over accounts and services (though that might focus more on subscriptions).

Source: Android Developers Blog Via: Engadget

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Mobile Syrup

ChatGPT probably read your cringey blog posts

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the current hype, especially thanks to Microsoft’s recently announced integration of an updated ChatGPT into Bing and Edge.

Despite the hype, there’s a ton of concern about ChatGPT and AI tools in general, such as the potential for misinformation or the impact on jobs. However, a less discussed impact of tools like ChatGPT is the impact on privacy.

An article published in The Conversation (and republished by Gizmodo) highlights several concerns with ChatGPT and its (mis)use of personal data. For starters, it highlights how OpenAI trained ChatGPT using some 300 billion words scraped from the internet. These words came from books, articles, websites, blog posts and more. The words also included personal information obtained without consent (though this is one of many problems with using the internet to train ChatGPT).

Put another way, anything you’ve written online — a blog post, product review, comment on an article, etc. — possibly got vacuumed up to train ChatGPT and other AI language tools.

While you may not think that’s a huge problem, The Conversation highlights a few issues with this kind of data collection. First, OpenAI didn’t ask anyone if it could use the data, which is particularly concerning when it comes to sensitive information or data that could identify someone.

The publication also notes that OpenAI doesn’t offer a way for people to check if their personal information is being stored or request that the information be deleted.

Beyond individuals who’ve posted on the internet, The Conversation notes that ChatGPT doesn’t consider copyright protections. As an example, the publication was able to make the tool generate the first few paragraphs of a copyrighted novel. (I was able to recreate this by getting ChatGPT to write a few paragraphs of The Hobbit, but a similar prompt to write a page from Dune didn’t work).

ChatGPT writing the first couple paragraphs of The Hobbit.

ChatGPT wrote the first two paragraphs of The Hobbit.

More to this, OpenAI didn’t pay for the data it scraped from the internet, which is particularly frustrating as the company moves to monetize ChatGPT.

The Conversation goes on to examine ChatGPT’s privacy policy, which says that OpenAI gathers user information like IP address, browser type and settings, data on interactions with the site and more. It also collects information about users’ browsing activities over time and across websites (something that’s more alarming given Microsoft is building OpenAI tools into its Edge browser).

Whatever happens with ChatGPT and other AI tools going forward, those planning to use the tools should keep the privacy implications front of mind.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: The Conversation Via: Gizmodo

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Canadian carriers app include trackers from Facebook, Google, more

Several Canadian carriers and their flanker brands include trackers from Google, Facebook and others in mobile apps offered to customers.

After recently switching to Telus, I downloaded the company’s mobile app to see if there were any features I wanted to use. Within a few hours of downloading the My Telus app, I noticed that DuckDuckGo’s App Tracking Protection had blocked almost 1,400 tracking attempts using known third-party trackers from Google, Facebook and Adobe.

App Tracking Protection, if you haven’t heard of it, is a feature offered in the DuckDuckGo mobile app for Android. The functionality has been around for almost a year (I first wrote about it early in 2022), but it recently entered public beta, meaning anyone with an Android phone can download the app and try it out. It uses a VPN to filter network traffic coming from your device and blocks known third-party trackers to prevent data from leaving your device. Even though it uses Android’s built-in VPN feature, DuckDuckGo says everything is handled on-device, and App Tracking Protection doesn’t route data through external servers. The search company even made the blocklist used for App Tracking Protection publicly available on GitHub.

Curious if Telus was an outlier, I downloaded the mobile apps offered by several Canadian carriers and wireless providers available in Ontario, including:

  • My Telus
  • MyRogers
  • Fido My Account
  • My Chatr
  • MyBell
  • Virgin Plus My Account
  • Lucky Mobile
  • Freedom My Account

It’s worth noting that Telus’ flanker brands Koodo and Public Mobile don’t offer mobile apps. Additionally, testing was performed on a Pixel 7 running Android 13 and the November 2022 security patch. The apps weren’t tested on iPhone since the iOS version of the DuckDuckGo app doesn’t support App Tracking Protection (iOS does offer built-in App Tracking Transparency, which I’ll touch on further down).

Trackers collect a variety of data

The trackers blocked by DuckDuckGo’s App Tracking Protection can collect a wide array of data. App Tracking Protection lists information that each tracker is known to collect, such as information about the device being used, such as screen resolution, network/carrier, OS version, charging status, device language, headphone status, system volume, rotation data, and more. The trackers also try to collect some personal data, including location, gender, postal code, and email. Trackers also collect unique identifiers, advertising IDs, GPS coordinates, available memory and storage, and much, much more.

The screenshots below show the trackers detected in Canadian carrier apps and what those trackers are known to collect:

Allison Goodman, a senior communications manager for DuckDuckGo, told MobileSyrup in an interview that apps may include these trackers for things like analytics and marketing, noting that over 96 percent of popular free Android apps tested by DuckDuckGo contain hidden third-party trackers. 87 percent sent data to Google, and 68 percent sent data to Facebook. DuckDuckGo also cited an AppCensus report with similar results.

“Personal data companies like Facebook and Google use that information to build a profile that advertisers and content-targeting companies use to influence what you see online,” Goodman wrote.

“The problems with all this information collection go way beyond so-called ‘relevant’ (aka creepy) advertising and targeting. Tracking networks can sell your data to other companies like data brokers, advertisers, and governments, resulting in more substantial harms like ideological manipulation, discrimination, personal price manipulation, polarization, and more.”

Trackers in carrier apps

App Tracking Protection blocked Google, Facebook, and Adobe trackers in the My TELUS app.

App Tracking Protection blocked Google, Facebook, and Adobe trackers in the My TELUS app.

The My Telus app racked up tracking attempts faster than apps from other providers and was also one of only two that included trackers from Facebook. The other was Freedom Mobile’s My Account app. My Telus also included Google and Adobe trackers.

Telus did not provide comment in time for publication.

App Tracking Protection blocked Google, Facebook, and Adobe trackers in the Freedom app.

App Tracking Protection blocked Google, Facebook, and Adobe trackers in the Freedom app

Along with the Facebook trackers, App Tracking Protection blocked Google and Adobe trackers from Freedom Mobile’s app.

Freedom did not provide comment in time for publication.

App Tracking Protection blocked Google and Adobe trackers in Rogers' and Fido's apps.

App Tracking Protection blocked Google and Adobe trackers in Rogers’ and Fido’s apps

Rogers, as well as flanker brand Fido, had both Google and Adobe trackers. Interestingly, App Tracking Protection blocked no trackers from the Chatr app.

A Rogers spokesperson told MobileSyrup that information collected by the MyRogers and Fido My Account apps is used for internal analytics and diagnostics to determine app functionality and operating system support. Moreover, the spokesperson said that the apps don’t disclose customer information with third parties for cross-tracking across apps and websites. Instead, all data is collected and used solely by Rogers and Fido. The Rogers spokesperson said that only customers can choose whether to enable location services and that doing so allows customers to receive more relevant information, like regional service offerings or details about regional network issues.

The spokesperson also emphasized that Rogers’ apps comply with all Canadian privacy laws, including PIPEDA, and both the Google and Apple developer policies.

Bell app tracking attempts blocked by App Tracking Protection

Bell app tracking attempts blocked by App Tracking Protection

Finally, the Bell, Virgin Plus, and Lucky Mobile apps all had trackers blocked by App Tracking Protection. For the most part, Bell and related apps used a third-party tracker from Branch Metrics. According to the Branch Metrics website, it “provides the leading mobile linking platform, with solutions that unify user experience and measurement across different devices, platforms, and channels,” which sounds a lot like analytics. Still, the App Tracking Protection detailed that Branch Metrics is known to collect data like location, email address, postal code, device details, local IP address, and more.

In a statement to MobileSyrup, Bell said:

“The MyBell, Virgin Plus MyAccount and Lucky Mobile apps are used by customers to manage their account and billing, check their usage as well as technical support. In order to provide these services to customers, we need certain information such as device platform, the version of the operating system, and IP address. We also know which province that the customer is located in, because our pricing and services are based by region. However, we do not collect location below the provincial level, nor do we request or use background location. Maintaining the privacy and security of our customers’ personal information is a priority for us, and we do not share this information with other parties.”

What about iPhone users?

As I mentioned above, DuckDuckGo’s iPhone app doesn’t offer App Tracking Protection, but iOS has a built-in App Tracking Transparency feature. However, it differs from App Tracking Protection by operating primarily on an agreement with app developers — if a user chooses to opt out of tracking for an app, then that app can’t use that user’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). However, research revealed many apps build digital fingerprints on users by collecting other data, meaning App Tracking Transparency doesn’t actually do much to stop tracking (Moreover, Apple’s own apps don’t follow the setting).

MobileSyrup asked each carrier whether their apps respected the App Tracking Transparency feature included in iOS. Those that provided comment to MobileSyrup for this story did not directly answer the question, and only Rogers brought up Apple developer policies.

Ultimately, you may want to remove any carrier apps installed on your smartphone, especially if you have concerns about the tracking. Most carrier apps offer the same functionality as what’s available through carrier websites, so there isn’t really a need to install the apps anyway. Moreover, if your Android device comes with one of these apps pre-installed and you can’t remove it, head to Settings > Apps > See all apps > Select the carrier app > Tap ‘Disable.’ This is about as close to uninstalling a pre-installed app as you can get.

Alternatively, download DuckDuckGo’s app and enable App Tracking Protection. Honestly, you might want to do this anyway — it will block trackers from more than just carrier apps. The DuckDuckGo app is available for free on the Play Store.

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Mobile Syrup

Carriers offer $40/20GB plans for Black Friday, but only in stores

If you’re looking to get a good deal on a phone plan, you’ll need to head to your local carrier store. We can’t say that these deals will be available across the country, but we’ve found many in-store deals in Toronto that are as much as $10 cheaper per month than online prices.

As Back Friday approaches, the Big Three (Bell, Rogers, Telus) are offering an online deal that nets users 15GB of 4G data for $60 per month. The carriers have a better arrangement of 20GB of 5G data for $55 in-store. However, most sales associates pushed us to their flanker brands (Virgin, Koodo, Fido) since they offer better deals.

All have some variation of a 4G plan with 20GB of data for $40 per month. These plans are bring-your-own-device promos that require a new activation and only last for 15 months. However, since you’ll need to switch off your current plan to a new carrier to take advantage of this deal, I expect there’s a considerable chance that your old carrier will call you with a stellar deal sometime within the 15 months.

My girlfriend Alex’s phone plan was an aging $65/10GB Koodo plan, so she needed to jump ship to another carrier. We chose Virgin since they offered to waive the $50 activation fee, and the giant Rogers/Fido outage this summer was still fresh in our minds. Not to mention that the girl working the Virgin Plus store at the mall was friendly and the only one to open her pitch by being transparent about the 15-month fine print. It’s also worth noting that if you choose Koodo, you’ll have to pick your perk. This could get you roll-over data, which is cool, but it comes at the expense of international texting (although you can pick international texting as a perk instead).

Shopping in stores is much more annoying than online, but the deals are worth sitting through sales pitches on 5G, awkwardly empty showrooms and suffering through rude or misinformed employees. It’s been a while since I’ve gone to buy a data plan in person, and the experience was not fun, but the deals are well worth it. Who knows, I might even head back next week to see if I can get a better deal on my home internet too.

You can view a complete list of online phone plan deals in Canada here.

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Canadians relying on mobile data at never before seen rates, recent CRTC report shows

Close up of a man using mobile smart phone

A recent report from Canada’s broadcasting and telecom watchdog shows Canadians are using wireless mobile services more than ever.

This is made possible as 99.7 percent of Canada has access to mobile coverage, whether that be HSPA+, LTE, LTE-A, or 5G, by the end of 2020.

Data from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) recent Communications Market Reports on mobile wireless trends shows mobile data consumption was highest in the last quarter of 2021. The average data subscriber used 5.3GB of data every month, increasing from the 3.8GB recorded in Q4 2020.

Image credit: CRTC

The report says the cost of mobile service plans is also decreasing as customers switch to packages with larger data offerings.

The data shows the national cost of 50GB plans decreased by nearly 30 percent between 2020 and 2021, and the cost of 10GB plans decreased by almost 20 percent for the same time period.

5GB plans decreased more than 50 percent between 2016 and 2021. Similar figures are also reported for 2GB plans.

Subscriptions to mobile plans remained strong, the report outlines, and was not impacted by COVID. “This trend is expected to continue as Canadians rely on their mobile devices more and more in the coming years.”

Image credit: CRTC

The CRTC says the target to provide mobile availability to all of Canada’s population, and various highways and roads are on track to be completed by 2026.

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, which represents companies providing wireless services in Canada, praises organizations for investing in Canada’s wireless spectrum.

“Even as prices decline and usage soars, Canada’s telecom network operators continue to invest billions each year in expanding Canada’s digital infrastructure to underserved communities and ensuring Canada maintains its global leadership in quality of service by deploying next-generation technologies such as 5G,” Robert Ghiz, CWTA’s CEO, said.

However, neither the CRTC’s report nor the CWTA’s response mentions that Canadians pay some of the highest cell phone bills in the world.

Analyst firm Rewheel Research’s 2021 report showed Canadians pay some of the highest costs for a 20GB plan, which costs seven times more than for consumers in France.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: CWTA and CRTC

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Mobile Syrup

Rogers is offering some customers 5GB of free data

Rogers is offering some wireless customers 5GB of free monthly mobile data every month for the next 15 months, according to a screenshot sent to MobileSyrup by a reader.

To redeem the extra data, sign in to your MyRogers account and select ‘Get this offer.’ If you haven’t received a text from Rogers and you’re a current Rogers customer, it’s worth logging into your MyRogers account just to make sure it hasn’t appeared.

Rogers 5G offer

 

It’s unclear how widespread this offer is or if it’s regional.

Have you received this offer from Rogers? Let us know in the comment section below.

Thanks Christopher

Image credit: Christopher

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Mobile Syrup

Hackers breached Mailchimp, targeted crypto holders with phishing scams

Email marketing firm Mailchimp confirmed over the weekend that hackers breached an internal tool and used it to access 300 user accounts and steal audience data from 102 of those accounts.

The breach was outed first by Trezor (via Bleeping Computer), a company that makes hardware wallets for cryptocurrency. Trezor used Mailchimp to send newsletters to customers.

Following the breach, several customers received phishing emails that appeared to be from Trezor and warned of a “security incident.” The emails prompted users to download a malicious version of Trezor’s app to reset their hardware wallet PIN. If installed, the malicious app could have allowed hackers to steal users’ cryptocurrency.

Mailchimp’s chief information security officer (CISO), Siobhan Smyth, told TechCrunch that the company became aware of the breach on March 26th. Smyth explained that the company a malicious actor accessed a tool used by its customer support staff and account administration teams through a successful social engineering attack — social engineering refers to manipulating people and exploiting human error to gain private information, such as login credentials.

“We acted swiftly to address the situation by terminating access for the compromised employee accounts and took steps to prevent additional employees from being affected,” Smyth said in the statement.

Although Mailchimp declined to share with TechCrunch what data hackers accessed in the breach, it did say that the attack targetted customers in the cryptocurrency and finance sectors. Moreover, Mailchimp said that the attackers gained access to API keys for an undisclosed number of customers — those keys potentially allow attackers to send spoofed emails that appear to be from legit Mailchimp customers.

Mailchimp says it has disabled those API keys and they can no longer be used. However, Smyth told TechCrunch that the company received reports that hackers used the information they obtained from user accounts to send phishing campaigns to accounts’ contacts.

Smyth declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions about whether Mailchimp would implement additional security measures. Further, Mailchimp wouldn’t disclose how many other cryptocurrency or finance customers were impacted by the breach.

As it stands, anyone subscribed to newsletters should be on alert for possible phishing scams, especially if subscribed to crypto or finance newsletters. It’s best to avoid clicking any links in emails you receive.

Moreover, MobileSyrup uses Mailchimp for its weekly newsletter but has not seen any indication that it was impacted by the breach.

Source: Bleeping Computer, TechCrunch

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Mobile Syrup

Apple’s MacBook Pro has an SD card reader again, but only at UHS-II speeds

Apple has now confirmed the specifications for the built-in SD card slot on the new MacBook Pro. Disappointingly, the speed will max out at a little over 300MB/s.

Apple confirmed the speed to The Verge’s Dan Seifert, who posted the information to Twitter. Further, 9to5Mac shared an excellent breakdown of the various SD card standards, since it can be rather confusing.

First, there are two physical sizes of SD card — ‘full size’ SD cards and microSD cards, which are much smaller. You can get adapters to use microSD cards in full size SD card readers, however.

Next up are capacity categories, all of which the new MacBook Pros support:

  • SD (up to 2GB)
  • SDHC (up to 32GB)
  • SDXC (up to 2TB)
  • SDUC (up to 128TB)

Finally, are the speed ratings. We marked the ones supported by the new MacBook Pros with an asterisk (*) below:

  • Standard SD* – 12.5MB/s
  • High Speed (HS)* – 25MB/s
  • Ultra High Speed I (UHS-I)* – 104MB/s
  • Ultra High Speed II (UHS-II)* – 312MB/s
  • Ultra High Speed III (UHS-III) – 624MB/s
  • SD Express (HC/XC/UC) – 985MB/s or 1,970MB/s or 3,940MB/s

To further complicate all this, some UHS SD cards will show half of the speeds listed above. This is because that’s the maximum full ‘duplex speed’ where one lane each is assigned to a “downstream direction” like transferring data from the host to a card, and the other assigned to “upstream” for transferring data from the card to a host. Cards can also operate in a “half duplex” mode and use both lanes for one direction. According to the SD Association’s website, a UHS-II card could operate at 156MB/s in full duplex or 312MB/s in half duplex.

While it’s great that the new MacBook Pros brought back the SD card slot, it’s a little disappointing that it doesn’t support higher speeds. For most use cases, UHS-II is likely fine. But professional users like videographers or photographers may find themselves bumping up against that transfer speed ceiling more often than not.

Source: Dan Seifert (Twitter) Via: 9to5Mac

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Mobile Syrup

Twitch confirms passwords weren’t exposed in October 6th security breach

Amazon-owned Twitch, a popular streaming service, has confirmed that passwords weren’t exposed in the recent data breach that saw the platform’s source code leaked online.

In an update posted on October 15th, Twitch explained that it is “confident” that attackers didn’t access the systems that store Twitch login credentials. It also confirmed that attackers didn’t access full credit card numbers or bank information.

On October 6th, a massive trove of Twitch data was made available for download online. The data included Twitch source code, creator payout information, an unreleased competitor to Steam (a popular platform for buying PC games) and more.

Twitch later confirmed the leak, and in the latest update, provided some more information about the data exposed by the security breach:

“The exposed data primarily contained documents from Twitch’s source code repository, as well as a subset of creator payout data. We’ve undergone a thorough review of the information included in the files exposed and are confident that it only affected a small fraction of users and the customer impact is minimal. We are contacting those who have been impacted directly.”

Twitch previously blamed the breach on an error in a “server configuration change” and said it had reset all stream keys “out of an abundance of caution.”

The Verge notes that sources have spoken out about Twitch, accusing the company of poor security practices. Further, the sources claimed that Twitch experienced a security problem in 2017 but didn’t report it.

Source: Twitch Via: The Verge