Weekly News about Technology

Android apps 'leak' personal details

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20025973

Are Androids really safe to use ?

Scientists tested 13,500 Android apps and found almost 8% failed to protect bank account and social media logins.

These apps failed to implement standard scrambling systems, allowing "man-in-the-middle" attacks to reveal data that passes back and forth when devices communicate with websites.

The researchers were able to:

• capture login details for online bank accounts, email services, social media sites and corporate networks
• disable security programs or fool them into labelling secure apps as infected
• inject computer code into the data stream that made apps carry out specific commands

An attacker could even re-direct a request to transfer funds, while making it look to the app user like the transaction was proceeding unchanged.

Some of the apps tested had been downloaded millions of times, the researchers said.

And a follow-up survey of 754 people suggests users could struggle to spot when they were at risk.

In my opinion, I personally think that Androids are really unsafe to use when it comes to protecting peoples personal details, especially that only 8 % out of 13,500 phones that were being tested failed to protect the bank details. If you use an android phone, you have to extra careful at all times so that people don't steal your personal data and it shouldn't  be like this.

Weekly News about Technology

How smartphone users are opening the door to fraudsters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/oct/07/smartphones-apps-identity-theft-fraudsters

In this article that’s published on the Guardian they talk about how Smartphone users are putting themselves at risk of having their identities stolen by failing to log out of apps and clear their browser histories.

A survey by credit reference and have found that while more than a quarter of people do online banking on their phone, a third don't log out of social media or banking websites, 42% fail to clear their browser history and 45% do not protect their smart phones with passwords.

Even worse, one in five store passwords, pins, bank account or credit card details on their smart phones. All this makes it easier for fraudsters to access personal information, including bank details, if phones are lost or stolen.
But it seems many users don't realise just how much data they are holding and how at risk their identity could be. There seems to be a culture of 'it couldn't happen to me'. A stolen phone can provide all the passwords, email addresses, telephone numbers and personal information criminals need to open new accounts and rack up huge debts in the victim's name. This can be simply done by logging on in internet cafes to do internet banking or using free Wi-Fi on trains were people can log onto your account and trace your history. It has come to attention that even logging out of apps and clearing your history may not be enough to protect your personal details.

Personally I think that we are all at major risk of this happening to us, this article comes in handy to us all as awareness. It shows us that the risk we are getting ourselves into just because of using a Smartphone and makes us think is a Smartphone really worth losing our money

Weekly News About Technology

April Jones murder: teenager jailed over offensive Facebook posts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/08/april-jones-teenager-jailed-facebook

A man who posted "despicable" comments on his Facebook page about the missing five-year-old April Jones has been jailed for 12 weeks. Matthew Woods, 19, from Chorley, Lancashire, made derogatory posts about April and missing Madeleine McCann after getting the idea from Sickipedia, a website that "trades in sick jokes".
Among his comments was: "I woke up this morning in the back of a transit van with two beautiful little girls, I found April in a hopeless place." Another read: "Who in their right mind would abduct a ginger kid?" Others stated: "I love April Jones" and "Could have just started the greatest Facebook argument ever. April Fools, Who Wants Maddie?" He also wrote comments of a sexually explicit nature about April, who went missing last week from near her home in mid-Wales.
Woods, who is unemployed, was arrested for his own safety on Saturday night and was remanded in custody before his appearance at Chorley magistrates court on Monday, where he pleaded guilty to sending a message or other matter that is grossly offensive by means of a public electronic communications network. Woods smirked as members of the public clapped as he was led from the dock.

Representations

YouTube Clip at the Olympics and article by Rick Dewsbury

All races and ethnicities are shown in a positive way as they are all coming together and shown equally dancing and singing together, well known British musicals and songs.

We also see how all races and ethnicities have changed over time as they show at the beginning mainly white British people but over the years that they show have passed more races and ethnicities are shown part of the British culture. Also usually we wouldn't really expect the main characters that would be representing British people and the Olympics to be a black or mixed race person. The Olympics try to go against that stereotype. So in some ways this could also relate to Alvarado’s theory of racial representations that they are just pitying the black community by making them main characters for once.

They also try to break the typical stereotype of the all white suburban style home with having a black husband and white middle class wife, showing them living a happy lifestyle. However the article by Rick Dewsbury had stated that the “multicultural equality agenda was so staged it was painful t watch”, and also he talks about the suburban family as being an educated white mother and black father to be living together with a happy family is such a “set up” and also a “challenge”, it questions the readers into thinking maybe are these statements true? Are they really forcing this storyline?  But also in some ways this relates to Frantz fanon’s theory of wearing a white mask in some ways. For instance, in order for black races they somewhat have to mix with a white family to fit into the good middle class stereotype of living good, e.g. wear the white mask.