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Showing posts from April, 2017

Phone-obsessed parents may be harming family life

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Research suggests that parents who continually check their mobile phones may be disrupting family life. In a poll of 2,000 11 to 18-year-olds in the UK, more than a third said they had asked their parents to stop checking their devices, with almost half of them saying it makes no difference when they do. However, fewer than 10% of the 3,000 parents that took part in the survey thought their time spent on devices was concerning their children. The research was carried out by Digital Awareness UK and the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC). In a press release published yesterday, the two organisations said the aims of the survey were to "better understand attitudes and behaviours relating to mobile device use and further improve support given to young people in and out of school." Dr Bex Lewis, who is a christian and author of, "Raising children in a digital age," welcomed the survey's results and told  Premier ...

Apple Caught Uber Secretly Tracking iPhones With Hidden Software

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Updates to the Uber smartphone app released in November have been criticized by users for the amount of data they harvest—but the ride-hailing company ran afoul of Apple for invasive data-collection practices well before that, according to a new report. In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook threatened to have the Uber app removed from Apple's App Store when the company learned Uber had deployed software that could track individual iPhones even after they deleted the app,  The New York Times  reported in a profile on Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.  Uber tried—and failed—to hide this software from Apple. Tracking individual iPhones, a practice known as "fingerprinting," is prohibited by Apple. But Uber tried to get around this by geo fencing the tech giant's Cupertino, California, headquarters. Any iPhone brought within the Apple campus was supposed to hide the software, in theory shielding it from inquisitive Apple employees.  But the company found out an...