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Today’s topics include Apple working to fix an iPhone X cold weather display glitch; a Google study blaming phishing as being the cause of most account takeovers; HPE unveiling a blockchain-as-a-service for enterprises; and the SwiftKey keyboard app adding customizable features.
Some owners of iPhone X smartphones are complaining on Reddit and other social media sites that their new devices are not always responding to screen touches in cold weather. The issue was first noted on Nov. 8 by Reddit user darus214, who claimed his iPhone X’s screen quickly becomes unresponsive when going outdoors from a warm indoor location.
A Nov. 9 story by The Loop reported that Apple has confirmed the problem for some iPhone X users and is working on a fix to be released as part of an upcoming software update. A Sept. 21 Apple product support advisory explains that iPhones, iPads and iPods can change their behavior to regulate their temperature.
Apple iOS devices should be used when ambient temperatures are between 32º to 95º F to avoid the device unexpectedly turning off or the shortening of battery life, according to Apple.
Google released last week a year-long study conducted by University of California Berkeley researchers citing the vast majority of account takeovers are caused by phishing attacks rather than third-party data breaches.
Between March 2016 and March 2017, the researchers examined leaked credentials from three sources—passwords and usernames exposed in third-party data breaches, credentials obtained via phishing kits and those obtained via keyloggers.
People who hand over their usernames and passwords to phishers are 400 times more likely to be hijacked compared to a random Google user, the study found. In contrast, third-party breach and keylogger victims were only 10 and 20 times more likely to have their accounts taken over, respectively. This discrepancy exists because phishing kits often steal more than just a username and password, such as phone numbers and geolocation data, increasing the chances of a successful account break-in.
Following IBM’s, Microsoft’s and Oracle’s moves into the fast-growing blockchain infrastructure IT arena, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise on Nov. 10 revealed the beta release of Mission Critical Distributed Ledger Technology, which enables customers to run distributed ledger workloads on the highest availability enterprise platforms.
HPE claims that enterprises evaluating blockchain solutions are finding that generic infrastructure and public cloud environments cannot support the needs of most enterprises in terms of performance, security, scalability and resiliency.
Thus, HPE’s Mission Critical DLT offers availability and fault protection for enterprise-grade applications, as well as scalability and SQL integration. Mission Critical DLT is offered on HPE Integrity NonStop platforms, which process two-thirds of all credit card transactions in the world.
SwiftKey, the onscreen keyboard app for Android and iOS that translates thumb swipes into complete words, now has more customization options. The app learns from a person’s texting, email and Twitter habits to improve the prediction engine for its over 250 million users.
Android users can now configure their keys to display or omit borders, characters and symbols. Meanwhile, iOS users can select the color of their keys when they are pressed. Both versions also now feature Photo Themes, allowing users to select their own photos as a background image.
To get the ball rolling, SwiftKey partnered with distinguished nature photographer Keith Ladzinski to offer professional-quality background images. SwiftKey stated, “Keith has taken pictures on all seven continents and his work has been featured in National Geographic, Discovery Channel and more. Keith curated a selection of twelve of his shots in an exclusive gallery for SwiftKey users.”