Articles about Mobile

Europol, the law enforcement agency for the European Union, is warning that people should exercise extreme caution when using WiFi hotspots when out and about. Citing an increase in the number of "man-in-the-middle" attacks on such connections, the head of Europol's cybercrime division, Troels Oerting, said that public WiFi connections are being used to "steal information, identity or passwords and money from the users who use [them]". The advice is to not necessarily stop using public networks, but to avoid using them for anything that involves transmitting personal data.

Singled out for particular attention is online banking, which Oerting suggests people should do "from home where they know actually the wi-fi and its security" rather than in a coffee shop. Europol is currently working with several member states of the European Union following an increase in the number of WiFi network attacks.

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I’m still working-away on my IBM book and it is still a week from being finished (the well-known second 90 percent syndrome). The book, if I am allowed to sell it on Amazon, will cost a whopping $3.99 and will be worth the money. But I’m still a columnist of sorts so here are my thoughts on pCell, an impressive new technology for increasing performance of LTE mobile data networks. It was invented by WebTV founder Steve Perlman, introduced two weeks ago in New York (very impressive video here, but fast-forward to 5:30) and was the talk of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the following week. pCell is amazing. It is also probably a security nightmare waiting to happen.

This is not me being a bad-ass or somehow wanting pCell to fail. I think it is great and I want it to wildly succeed, but there are a couple things about pCell that have been going over the heads of most reporters, security being one of them. I’ve read all the stories about pCell and the word security doesn’t appear in any of them, none.

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The increasing trend towards BYOD and mobile devices in the workplace leads to added risks, but employees are often unaware or feel it isn't their problem.

These are among the findings of a survey by security specialist Absolute Software which polled workers in companies with a 1,000 or more employees who use mobiles for work.

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Benchmarks are important. With so much choice in the world of computers, smartphones and tablets, a key factor for potential buyers to bear in mind is raw performance. A few months back benchmarking stalwarts Futuremark took the unusual step of delisting a number of handsets produced by HTC and Samsung after tests appeared to show that the phone artificially boosted performance when they detected benchmarking software was running. Now it looks as though this apparent cheating has come to an end.

Back in October, results published on Anantech showed how a number of popular phones seemed to be cheating the system, giving consumers a false representation of real-world handset performance. Now, according to new tests carried out by Ars Technica it would appear that handsets are behaving in a far more reasonable fashion after being updated to KitKat.

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There are few people who like ads. Sure, they can be works of art -- certainly there are some advertisements that are infinitely better than a lot of the dirge pumped out by television networks -- but while advertisements on television can be fairly easily avoided (thank you TiVo -- other PVRs are available!) it is a different matter on a computer or mobile device. "Opting" to watch a mindblowing ad for Apple, Guinness or Honda is one thing, but to have unavoidable -- and usually crappy -- advertisements forced upon you whilst browsing the web or using an application is an entirely different matter.

There are groups of people who are happy to endure these adverts because they fund apps, and make it possible for developers to provide their hard work free of charge -- you may fall into this group and have perhaps been able to configure an automatic ad filter for your eyes. But there are larger legions for whom ads are just plain, damned irritating. In some instances it is possible to pay to avoid them, but this is not always the case. If BlackBerry and Yahoo get their way, advertisements are going to become rather more noticeable.

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The latest breed of virus is airborne. We're not talking about a 24 hour bug that does the rounds at the office, but a computer virus. A team of researchers at the University of Liverpool, UK, demonstrated how a virus known as Chameleon was able to spread undetected over Wi-Fi by exploiting vulnerabilities in access points.

For town and cities where there are large numbers of routers and access points in close proximity, this represents a serious security risk as there is potential for a terrifying number of infections to be made in very little time.

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In keeping up with tradition, there will be two processors available in the Samsung Galaxy S5. The international version gets Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon 801, while another model -- that will most likely be available in non-LTE markets -- ships with the company's own octa-core Exynos chip, that Samsung just unveiled at MWC 2014.

Samsung is increasingly reliant on Qualcomm processors for its flagship Android devices, like the Galaxy S4, Galaxy Note 3 and, most recently, Galaxy S5, as the Exynos chips that arrived in 2013 have failed to live up to expectations. Even though those were octa-core designs, the Qualcomm-made, quad-core, solutions performed similarly and came with a very competent LTE modem as well. Samsung is not giving up (yet), as the new Exynos 5422 still aims to turn the tables in the company's favor.

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If you can never decide whether to take the notebook or the tablet with you when you go out, HP may have the machine for you.

Its new Pavilion x360 is a convertible PC with a 360-degree hinge so you can use it as a conventional notebook, a tablet, or in what the company calls "tent mode". Sadly this means only that you can stand it up on a table not actually go camping under it.

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If it is not obvious enough by now, 64-bit is the new black in mobile processors. Apple has the A7 that powers the iPhone 5s and latest iPads, and Qualcomm has the Snapdragon 410 and, as of today, the Snapdragon 610 and Snapdragon 615. Intel now also joins the party with its own 64-bit offering and contender, the Z3480, codenamed "Merrifield".

The Z3480 was unveiled today at the MWC conference, in Barcelona, as a 2.3 GHz quad-core solution aimed at Android smartphones and tablets. Intel says its new processor delivers "the ideal combination of fast, smart performance and long battery life", for the devices that it will power. The Z3480 competes with Qualcomm's similar Snapdragons which also target the open-source mobile OS.

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The mobile processor market is slowly moving away from 32-bit architectures, as more 64-bit solutions are set to hit the shelves. At MWC 2014, Qualcomm leads the pack with two new 64-bit offerings, the Snapdragon 610 and Snapdragon 615, that combine quad-core and octa-core power, respectively, with ARM's latest ARMv8 instruction set.

The ARMv8 instruction set, that is also at the heart of the Apple A7 processor in the iPhone 5s, ushers mobile devices into the 64-bit era, while, at the same time, maintaining compatibility with 32-bit software. Of the two new Snapdragons, the 615 is the most buzzworthy one to use it, so let us kick off with that.

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Mobile advertising company InMobi has announced the results of its 2014 Mobile Media Consumption Report.

Based on research covering over 14,000 respondents in 14 countries, the findings show that we’re increasingly living in a "mobile first" world with 60 percent now using a mobile as their primary or only means of going online.

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Publishing its Application Vulnerability Trends Report, Cenzic states that virtually all of the applications it tested had at least one security vulnerability. A staggering 96 percent of apps exhibited security issues, and it looks as though things are on a downward spiral.

In a similar report published last year, it was found that the median number of flaws was 13; this year it has increased to 14. So it appears as though things are getting worse... but is this the full story?

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Wireless carriers are opposing net neutrality because their networks have limited capacity and they need more flexibility to handle traffic. But they are missing an opportunity by not embracing spectrum sharing, a technology that could vastly increase the available bandwidth.

Net neutrality has been in the headlines following Verizon's recent Federal court win against the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) open Internet rules. Also, AT&T is now courting corporate sponsors to help subsidize customer data plans. Some consumer rights groups view these events as a concerted effort to undermine the longstanding practice that compels service providers to treat all traffic equally. These events could all signal the beginning of a tiered-off Internet.

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With the Winter Olympics about to start there have been a number of stories pointing out the security risks of people using their mobile devices in Sochi.

Writing in a blog post, Paul Proctor, vice president and analyst at Gartner says it's important to remember that you're not really safe anywhere and it's your behavior that's the key factor in your security.

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There are OMG events, and Sony's selling its PC business surely is one of them.

"It's an historic moment", Roger Kay, Endpoint president, says. "The company Steve Jobs looked up to as the paragon of style leaves the industry he helped found, driven off, at least in part, by him".

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