WhatsApp for Android lets you set custom notifications for your favorite contacts

by ABHIMANYU GHOSHAL

WhatsApp has updated its messaging app on Android with a bunch of useful new features today, giving users better control over notifications from individual contacts.

The ability to toggle the read status of chats showed up in an earlier build last month, but it’s here for all users now. Long-press on a conversation in the Chats list to mark it as read or unread.

Of course, this feature won’t affect the read status on messages within your conversation — it’s only there to make it easier to spot or ignore them.

Open up a conversation and tap View Contact, and you’ll spot new options for custom notifications. There are settings for vibration alerts, lights, pop-ups and audio tones.

This should make it easier to spot messages from people you care about, without having to unlock your device.

Set notifications for each contact

You can also mute conversations with individual contacts for preset periods, just like with group chats — though you’d probably have to be rather rude to do that!

You can now mute conversations from individual contacts

WhatsApp has also introduced skin tone variations for several existing emoji. Long-press the hand emoji to find them in pop-ups. Oh, and there’s a new Vulcan salute if you need it.

Long-press emoji to reveal skin tone variations

Additionally, the latest version also brings an option in the Chats and calls menu to reduce data usage when making calls. As we noted with last month’s build, this feature didn’t affect call quality negatively, so feel free to give it a go.

Android Phones – Your Info Stays On It Even After Reset

If you recently sold your old Android phone, chances are your text messages, emails, pictures and Facebook key are still in there, even if you wiped its memory clean.

A New study by computer researchers at the University of Cambridge shows that “factory reset” — at least on Android devices — doesn’t actually erase everything. Researchers tested 21 phones made by Google (GOOGL, Tech30), HTC, LG, Motorola (MSI) and Samsung (SSNLF). In every case, they were able to recover text messages, Google account credentials and conversations on messaging apps. A few emails remained on the device 80% of the time.

Also, the special app “tokens” that let you access your Facebook (FB, Tech30) and other social media accounts remained on the device.

 And sometimes, devices don’t properly wipe the special part of your phone that stores all your pictures and videos — at all.

 The devices affected by this include the HTC One, HTC Sensation XE, Motorola Razr I, Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy S Plus and others.

 Researchers said the Google Nexus 4 performed the best — but it still had issues.

 Each phone had a different set of problems. For example, the HTC One didn’t wipe its internal SD card (where pictures are stored) by erasing it through the phone’s “settings” section, even though that’s what HTC says you should do. Instead, you have to go through the “recovery” section.

Part of the blame lies with Google, which makes the Android software that runs all these phones. But the phone makers are also at fault, because of bad design and terribly slow upgrades and software updates, researchers told CNNMoney.

If you’re determined to sell your old phone, there’s no way to be sure your data is completely gone.

Manually deleting every photo, message and app doesn’t actually work. Hitting “delete” doesn’t really destroy that file on your phone, because flash memory — the type these phones use — is notoriously difficult to erase.

Another approach is to encrypt everything on your phone with a passcode. But then how will you sell your phone?

“This can be desperately complicated,” said Ross Anderson, a Cambridge engineering professor who worked on the study.

Per Thorsheim, a cybersecurity expert in Norway, offered a different, more brutal approach.

“Don’t hand off your old phone. Smash it,” he advised.

Google didn’t respond to questions for this story. The company normally suggests trying a combination of things: remotely wiping the phone as if it were stolen, hitting “factory reset,” and updating to a new version of Android that allows for encryption with a passcode.  But even that’s not 100% reliable, researchers say.

Fortunately, Google does offer an option to protect your Google-related stuff (like Gmail, Drive documents and maps). You can open Gmail, head to the Google dashboard and “revoke” that device’s access to your Google account.

Android’s phone wiping fails to delete personal data

Prepping an older phone for resale or as a donation? A study shows you’ll need more than the default data wipe tools to eliminate personal data and those embarrassing selfies.

• by Seth Rosenblatt

Avast discovered that Android’s factory reset option leaves deleted data in a recoverable state.Jack Frog/Shutterstock

 

Was that naked selfie you took really deleted before you sold your phone on eBay?

A new study from security software vendor Avast calls into question the effectiveness of Android’s factory reset option, which many people have relied upon to delete personal data from their old smartphones before reselling or making a charitable donation with the old device.

Avast — known for its security software on Windows, Mac, and Android — purchased 20 Android smartphones from eBay, which has around 80,000 used smartphones for sale at any given time. Among the data that Avast employees recovered from the phones were more than 40,000 photos — including 250 nude male selfies — along with 750 emails and text messages, 250 contacts, the identities of four phones’ previous owners, and one completed loan application.

The problem, as Avast mobile division president Jude McColgan told CNET, is that people still aren’t used to considering the implications of all the personal data stored on a smartphone.

“Users thought they were doing a clean wipe and factory reinstall,” he said, but the factory reinstall is cleaning phones “only at the application layer.”

Using off-the-shelf digital forensics tools, Avast was able to recover SMS and Facebook chats from Android phones.Avast

 

Smartphones can be a treasure trove of personal data, thanks to the central — and often rather intimate — role they’ve taken in people’s everyday lives, through Facebook posts, Snapchat conversations, online banking, Amazon purchases, and much more. It’s a new reality of personal technology recognized last month by no less a body than the US Supreme Court, which ruled that police must get a search warrant before delving into the contents of a person’s cell phone.

“We have a very unique relationship with our mobile phones that we’ve never had to any other technological device,” Bronson James, a lawyer involved in one of the cell phone cases decided by the Supreme Court, told CNET’s Ben Fox Rubin. “In our brief we equated our mobile devices as the entryway into our virtual home.”

Avast didn’t have to resort to much digital jiu-jitsu to recover the data from the phones it acquired, McColgan said. His team used “fairly generic, publicly available,” off-the-shelf digital forensics software such as FTK Imager, a drive-imaging program.

“Although at first glance the phones appeared thoroughly erased, we quickly retrieved a lot of private data. In most cases, we got to the low-level analysis, which helped us recover SMS and chat messages,” Avast researchers Jaromir Horejsi and David Fiser wrote in the report.

Avast noted in the report that its own Android security app comes with a deletion tool that the company said does a better job of wiping personal data than the included reset option.

McColgan was not shy about pointing this out. There’s a challenge, he said, in making people more aware of device security “when your whole PC and more is in your pocket.”

Is Microsoft telegraphing the demise of Windows Phone?

By Leo Mirani

Microsoft has recently made two moves that seem to undermine its Windows Phone operating system (OS). Last week came the Nokia X, a phone that runs Google’s Android OS instead. That was a big turnaround for Nokia, which had gambled its belated entry to the smartphone market on Windows Phone (and, many would say, lost). It was all the more remarkable as Nokia is now in the process of being absorbed by Microsoft. This week comes the news that Microsoft will allow Android app developers access to Office 365, an online, subscription-based version of Microsoft’s well-known software, which allows collaborative working.

 Neither one of these moves will send users rushing into the arms of Windows Phone (nor, admittedly, away from it). But it does help secure the future of Microsoft’s other businesses. Start with Nokia itself: Customers in the developing world love its phones. They trust it for its reliability, after-sales service and the fact that thousands of informal service centers know how to fix the things. In countries like India, there remains a thriving resale market for Nokia phones, unlike anything for its competitors.

 Yet those same customers are reluctant to upgrade to Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone because the OS is clunky, unintuitive and offers few apps. Running Android instead, and with unbeatable prices—they start at €89 ($122)—Nokia smartphones stand a much better chance.

  

The Office 365 announcement is geekier, but no less significant. Nobody understands business users like Microsoft does. Many of them use Microsoft products like Office 365. Many of them also use Android devices, for the reasons listed above. So instead of continuing to strong-arm them into switching to Windows Phone, the company may as well let them use their own phones and instead focus on retaining them as loyal users of Microsoft’s profitable business services.

 Letting Android developers work with Office 365 means businesses can write their own Android apps for their employees to access company data on the move, and that existing apps can do more, making businesses more likely to stay with Microsoft. And there will be further developments. According to Microsoft’s Office blog, “we’re committed to aggressively expanding our APIs and continuing to listen to the community’s feedback.” (APIs are what allow developers to write apps for a software platform like Office.) Microsoft seems to be realizing that when it comes to mobile, its best bet lies in getting as many people using its profitable business software as possible—and if that’s bad for Windows Phone, so be it.

Microsoft responded to a request for comment by pointing to this blog post, in which it notes that Nokia remains a separate company. More pertinently, the blogpost stresses that “we’re pleased to see Microsoft services like Skype, OneDrive and Outlook.com being introduced on these devices. This provides the opportunity to bring millions of people, particularly in growth markets, into the Microsoft family.”

Future Android security apps will learn from your phone to catch out the bad guys

by Robert Triggs

 

Malicious software might not be as huge of a problem as some reports would like you to believe, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take the time to protect our smartphones from potential attacks.

Fortunately, Zimperium, a new mobile security startup, seems to be taking mobile security seriously and is showing other developers the way forward.

Its new Android app, named zIPS or Zimperium intrusion prevention system, aims to keep Android devices secure by learning how they typically operate and identifying when something strange is happening. This kind of technique has been used to spot malware on PCs for quite a while, but implementing a similar system on Android is more difficult, as we’re constantly connecting to new networks and regularly installing and updating our software.

The bad news is that Zimperium is currently only offering its software to business clients, although the company expects to roll out a consumer version at some point in the future. But for interest’s sake, let’s see how this technology works.

As already mentioned, the app installed on the device scans, in real-time, for threats by monitoring any changes to your handset’s behaviour. If, for example, a malicious app attempts to self-modify, or a device on your wireless network attempts to intercept your data, zIPS will notice this departure from normal operations and notify the user. Common Android security, on the other hand, relies much more heavily on simply checking incoming file signatures that can be compared with known bad code, and therefore struggles to respond to some of the more advanced threats.

The second part of the software is the zCONSOLE, which is used by the license owner to observe any threats and monitor the linked Android devices. Although clearly designed for businesses, this could be pretty useful for families looking to protect all of their Android devices.

Zimperium is also keeping its eye on the future of the “Internet of Things”, which could be particularly vulnerable to security exploits as the devices are always online. The idea of real-time protection and centralized monitoring could be especially useful in this evolving technology.

Keep your eyes peeled for the consumer version in the, hopefully, not too distant future.

This Popular Flashlight App Has Been Secretly Sharing Your Location And Device ID

 

By  Alice Truong

More than 50 million users were left in the dark about how Brightest Flashlight shared their location and device information with third parties.

The Android app Brightest Flashlight has been installed between 50 million and 100 million times, averaging a 4.8 rating from more than 1 million reviews. Yet its customers might not be so happy to learn the app has been secretly recording and sharing their location and device ID information.

The app maker GoldenShores Technologies settled Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived users and is thus prohibited from further “misrepresenting how consumers’ information is collected and shared and how much control consumers have over the way their information is used.”

GoldenShore’s privacy policy had mentioned that information collected would be used by the company, but the FTC said location and device information was shared automatically with advertisers and other third parties–even when users opted out. In fact, before they could accept or refuse the app’s terms of agreement, the FTC said Brightest Flashlight was already collecting and sending information.

“When consumers are given a real, informed choice, they can decide for themselves whether the benefit of a service is worth the information they must share to use it,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “But this flashlight app left them in the dark about how their information was going to be used.”

Bitcoin developers say critical Android flaw leaves digital wallets vulnerable to theft

By Ellis Hamburger

In a blog post the developers of Bitcoin have announced the discovery of a critical weakness in Android that leaves Bitcoin wallets subject to theft. The vulnerability affects every Bitcoin wallet app for Android, including popular options like Bitcoin Wallet, blockchain.info wallet, BitcoinSpinner and Mycelium Wallet.

The developers say that the vulnerability lies in Android’s ability to generate secure strings of random numbers, which help keep your Bitcoins safe. Exchange front-end services like Mt. Gox and Coinbase are unaffected, since their private keys are not generated on-device. The developers strongly urge anyone who has generated a wallet using an Android app to generate a new address with a proven reliable random number generator, and to then send all the money in your wallet back to yourself.

BlueStacks announces the GamePop Mini, a free Android game console

by Andrew Grush

 

The Android “micro-console” market might be new, but it’s already starting to get crowded. Not only do we have the Ouya, there are also plenty of upcoming devices like the Gamestick, MadCatz M.O.J.O and even possibly a Google console.

 Then there’s the Bluestacks GamePop, an Android game console with a twist: you get as many apps as you can handle just by paying a monthly fee. It seems that BlueStacks isn’t content with just one model however, as the company has now announced that there will also be an even cheaper system, the so-called GamePop Mini.

So what’s different about this ‘mini’ variant? While an early pre-order deal gave customers a chance to get the GamePop free by pre-paying for a year’s worth of subscription service (around $84), the main console actually will retail for around $129. In contrast, the GamePop Mini will be “free forever”.

The catch is that you will have to sign a contract for 12-months of service at a price of $6.99 a month. Under the contract, if you stick through all twelve months you can then cancel at any time and still keep the GamePop Mini hardware.

For those that find that the GamePop Mini isn’t all it was cracked up to be, they can cancel at any time during the 12-month period and all they will be required to do is send back the console and pay a $25 restocking fee.

 Key differences between the GamePop and GamePop Mini

Wondering how the devices will compare? BlueStacks says that both versions will run Jelly Bean 4.2 and connect via HDMI. The two devices will also access to the same game library, which will consist of hundreds of titles from major mobile developers such as HalfBrick, Intellijoy and Glu.

The key difference between the two models is that the GamePop Mini is more compact in design and won’t have as beefy of hardware. There also may end up being more peripherals for GamePop that won’t necessarily work with the Mini.

On the positive side, BlueStacks says that the Mini will still be “able to handle all of your favorite apps and games plenty well”.

This is certainly a different approach than what we are seeing from the competition. The question is whether customers will go for the BlueStack Mini’s subscription model or not. What do you think, could you see yourself picking one of these up?

Samsung rumored to roll out fingerprint scanning on future Galaxy devices

by Craig Lloyd

It seems Apple isn’t the only company working on fingerprint scanning technology. It looks like Samsung is also getting into the biometrics business with a solution of their own. Deep within the Galaxy S III file system, some images have been discovered that show off illustrated fingerprints, hinting to that possibility that Samsung may implement fingerprint scanning in future devices.

According to SamMobile, a tipster found the images within the SecSettings.apk at SecSettings\res\drawable-hdpi. This indicates that Samsung could be testing some type of fingerprint scanning technology internally, and these images could’ve been left on older Galaxy S III devices by mistake, or just hidden deep within the file system so that no one could find them, but that didn’t turn out so well for them.

Then again, the images provide no indication of what exactly Samsung might have planned. We’re given just a generic group of fingerprint art, along with an image that shows a user tapping on the home button (or scanning their fingerprint, in this context), as well as some plus signs and a checkmark. Some of the pieces fit together, but we can’t be too sure, of course.

Apple has been rumored to bring fingerprint scanning to iOS devices for a while now. The company purchased security firm AuthenTec last year over the summer, as well as made a deal with biometric security startup Microlatch. Both of these business transactions could be a hint at the possibility of Apple getting into the fingerprint scanning industry.

However, we would take this with a grain of salt for the time being. Apple bought these companies before they released the iPhone 5, but biometric security was nowhere to be found on the new smartphone. It’s still possible that Apple is continuing to work on the technology, which could mean that the next iPhone will come equipped with such a feature. As for Samsung, we could see fingerprint scanning on the Galaxy S 5, although that’s a year away at this point now that the Galaxy S 4 is just being released.

Your Android smartphone as a second screen

by Simon Hill

You’ve no doubt heard the term “second screen”. It really just refers to any device you use while watching your TV. According to the surveys, more and more of us are surfing the web or instant messaging on our smartphones, tablets, and laptops while we watch TV or play games. Content producers and social service providers are excited because we’re often engaged in searching for data that’s related to whatever is on our first screen, or talking about it with family and friends.

Done right, second screen apps and services can enhance your viewing, or playing, pleasure by offering related facts, interactive polls or competitions, running commentary from critics or friends, and even links to buy featured products. There is a lot of potential there and it’s only just beginning to be tapped.

What do people do with the second screen?

A study from Google revealed that 77% of TV viewers have another device in their hand and that 81% of the 1,611 polled have used their smartphones while watching TV. Top of the list of activities was email at 60%, followed by internet browsing at 44%, and social networking at 42%.

A much larger, worldwide study from Ericsson found that 62% of people use social media while watching TV and that 40% percent of them are discussing what they’re watching.

When Verizon polled 2,319 Americans through Harris Interactive they found that 65% were planning to use a second screen during the last presidential debate. 41% wanted to fact-check, 39% wanted to follow live commentary from political reporters, and 32% wanted to catch social media reactions. A significant number also intended to weigh in with opinions. 23% said they would post to Facebook, 15% would use a forum or chat room, and 14% would be tweeting.

Trend is here to stay

The percentage of people using a second screen has been growing steadily year on year. The NPD Group released research yesterday revealing that 87 percent of U.S. entertainment consumers are using at least one second screen device while watching TV. For 55% of the 3,387 polled that device was a smartphone.

People seem to be content to dip into social media apps to share their thoughts, search IMDB for that actor’s name, or browse to the show’s website to enter competitions, but it could all be made much easier. In terms of interactivity we haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg. Second screen apps on Android are starting to get really interesting. Let’s take a look at some of the best.

Zeebox

Billing itself as “your TV’s sidekick”, zeebox is all about social buzz. You can chat with fans of your favorite shows, uncover a wealth of information, discover what shows other people (including celebs) are excited about, set up reminders so you don’t miss anything, and interact with select shows through polls, votes, and even games. The app also provides a TV guide and it has won the backing of some major networks. With zeetags you can get live info on what’s on screen and links to buy products. The app differs slightly from region to region; for example, the UK version also doubles up as a remote control for some TVs and set top boxes.