Apple is to pay $113m (£85m) to put an end to the ‘Batterygate’ scandal, where the company was accused of deliberately slowing down iPhone batteries to prompt users into buying a new iPhone.

What Happened?

Back in 2017, some iPhone users were sharing concerns online that their iPhone’s performance had slowed with age but had sped up after a battery replacement. This led to a customer sharing comparative performance tests of different models of the iPhone 6S on Reddit, which appeared to support the customer suspicions.

Technology website Geeknebench also shared the results of its own tests of several iPhones running different versions of the iOS operating system where some showed slower performance than others.

After customers concerns mounted and received more press, Apple publicly admitted that it had made changes one year earlier in the iOS 10.2.1 software update that is likely to have been responsible for the slowdown that customers may have experienced in iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, and iPhone SE.  The slowing affected millions of people with thirty-three U.S states claiming that Apple had caused the battery-slowing to encourage battery replacement and new phone purchases.

Apple issued an apology to customers in January 2018 but said that motivation for slowing the batteries was a desire to prolong the life of customer devices by managing their ageing lithium-ion batteries and preventing the inconvenience of a sudden and unexpected shutdown.

Settlement

This latest $113m (£85m) settlement is on top of the $500m that Apple agreed in March to pay to affected iPhone owners as a result of a class-action lawsuit. Although Apple has not admitted to deliberate wrongdoing it has agreed to be more transparent over the next 3 years about iPhone power management.

Other Woes

Apple is also being sued by Epic Games in Australia after Epic’s popular and lucrative ‘Fortnite’ game was removed from the Apple App Store in August after it bypassed Apple’s (and Google’s) in-app payment method, thereby depriving the tech giant(s) of the revenue.  Epic has long complained about having to pay between 15 and 30 per cent of transactions made through apps on iOS, and Android.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The whole debacle over appearing to keep quiet about something that essentially appeared to take away performance that customers had paid for and apparently prompt them to spend more money with Apple to fix it, and the obvious financial gain by Apple appears to have been a trust-damaging blot on Apple’s copybook.  It is no surprise then, that Apple is reaching financial settlements and, no doubt, the trillion-dollar company will be hoping to move on quickly.  It should not be forgotten, however, that whatever the reason for the phone-slowing update, it appears to have caused considerable disruption to the service that many customers had paid for, many of whom are likely to have needed their phones for important business matters.  It was a shock to many customers, who chose Apple for many positive reasons and trusted the brand, that anything like this could have happened and this matter is an example of how managing customer relationships in an age where information is shared quickly and widely by customers via the Internet involves making smart decisions about transparency and being seen to be up-front with loyal customers.

HMRC has issued a warning to those completing Self Assessment tax returns for 31 January not to be caught out by SMS messages and email scams purporting to be from HMRC.

Bogus

An upturn in scams using HMRC’s name has meant that in the last 12 months, HMRC has responded to more than 846,000 referrals of suspicious HMRC contacts from the public, and reported over 15,500 malicious web pages to internet service providers to be taken down. HMRC also reports that around 500,000 of the referrals from the public offered bogus tax rebates.

Personal Information and Bank Details Sought

Bogus HMRC scams, like all other scams, are designed as an easy way to get money, personal information, and bank details.  With the current bogus HMRC scams, the promise of a refund is the carrot being used to tempt victims to part with personal details and the threat/stick of a fictitious tax bill that needs to be paid is being used to extract fast money.

HMRC warns that criminals are also using the personal information gathered in the scam to access bank details or to sell on to other criminals, thereby increasing the risk of being targeted in more scams and attacks.

What Do The Scams Look Like?

Examples of recent HMRC scam texts and emails show that customers are informed that they have a pending tax refund/rebate or must review a document relating to an application for a rebate.  In both cases, customers are invited to click on a link.  This link directs the customer to a phishing website made to look like the UK government website.  Examples of these and also of recent COVID-related scams are shown on the real UK government website here.

Never, Never

HMRC is keen to point out that it NEVER:

– Sends notifications by email about tax rebates or refunds.

– Asks for personal or financial information in text messages.

– Uses ‘WhatsApp’ to contact customers about a tax refund. This is in response to a scam using WhatsApp recently.

– Uses social media to offer a tax rebate or to request personal or financial information. This is in response to a scam using Twitter recently.

Other HMRC-Focused Scams

HMRC has also highlighted another popular scam whereby a recorded call tells the recipient that HMRC is filing a lawsuit against them and that they need to press a number on the keypad to speak to a caseworker to make a payment.

What To Do

HMRC advises that recipients of these texts, emails, and calls should not reply, not click on any links, and not give any personal or financial details.  Instead, recipients should send any phishing text messages to 60599 (network charges apply), and report full details of the scam emails, texts, WhatsApp and social media messages by email to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk. All scam messages should also be deleted from the recipient’s phone or email account as soon as possible.

Those who have fallen victim to this or other scams where there has been a financial loss should contact Action Fraud.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Scammers are always ready to exploit fears and desires and this scam plays on both.  Essentially though, this is a phishing scam and phishing emails tend to have elements that give them away if the recipient can resist an immediate emotional response. In the case of this scam, and aside from the knowledge that HMRC does not communicate with customers in this way, the fact that it is unexpected, asks for money/personal information/bank details and is threatening should set alarm bells ringing. Other ways that phishing emails can be spotted include generic greetings (scammers are less likely to personalise), grammar/spelling mistakes, heavy emotional appeals that urge you to act immediately, and anomalies in the email address that a spam email has come from, or in the domain of the link to click on.  Businesses should ensure that staff are made aware of the risk of phishing emails, how to spot them and what to do/what not to do (not clicking on links in emails).  This is particularly important at a time when many staff are working from home and businesses should ensure that staff are kept firmly in the loop about security policy, security best practice, and current threats.

If you would like a fast and easy way to include emojis in your writing or get access to a free resource of extra graphics when using Windows 10, you may not know that Windows 10 now has an integrated emoji and Kaomoji keyboard. Here’s how to find it:

To load the emoji/kaomoji keyboard:

– Press the Windows key + ;

– Click on the icons at the bottom of the emoji window to reveal lots of colourful emojis in each category.

– These emojis can also be used as graphics in documents by highlighting them and increasing the font size.

From the end of November, Facebook’s WhatsApp users will have the option to automatically delete chats between the sender and recipient after 7 days.

Disappearing Messages

The new “disappearing messages” feature is not going to be the default setting and needs to be switched on by the user in the settings (or by the Admin in a group).  The 7-day time-limit will apply to read and unread messages. It will still be possible, however, for users who have the feature switched on to forward or screenshot any messages that they would like to keep.

Why? Several Reasons…

The idea for this feature is similar to rival Snapchat’s “Stories” feature which allowed users to post videos and photos to their profile which then disappeared after 24 hours. As well as being a feature needed to help compete, disappearing messages also works in Instagram, and its addition to WhatsApp highlights Facebooks hopes to integrate and make Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram interoperable in the near future.

Close To Real Conversations

Also, the WhatsApp blog says that “most of what we send doesn’t need to be everlasting”, and that “Our goal is to make conversations on WhatsApp feel as close to in-person as possible, which means they shouldn’t have to stick around forever”. WhatsApp has said that this feature is a way of keeping the app light.

Privacy

One other key reason why this feature is being added is to further emphasise the privacy aspects of the end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp.  WhatsApp’s desire to retain the end-to-end encryption of the app that is thought to be the reason why it has taken WhatsApp so long to add this feature.  On the privacy point, WhatsApp has also said that deletion of conversations after 7 days is a way to give users “peace of mind” i.e. improved privacy.

Relevance and Memory

The practical realities of people leaving things on platforms that are no longer relevant or likely to be needed again (and yet being able to remember what a conversation was about) are also things which WhatsApp says it has considered in arriving at a 7-day deletion point.

Users Getting More Control

The addition of the feature at this time can also be attributed to a general push by WhatsApp to add more features that give users more control and keep the app attractive to business users.  For example, a new storage management tool was added earlier this week to help users to manage the space taken up on their phones by gifs, videos and images sent via WhatsApp.

Good News

It can’t do any harm to roll out an essentially positive feature at a time when WhatsApp is trying to recover from criticism in recent years about e2e apps providing a safe communications channel for wrong-doers (e.g. the London Bridge attack), and recent allegations that third-party apps may be able to use WhatsApp’s online signalling feature to enable monitoring of the digital habits of anyone using WhatsApp.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For WhatsApp users, this feature is a value-adding option that could help to compete with rival message apps, retain their loyalty, and improve some practical aspects of the app (saving space on user’s phones), feeling more in control as well as bringing a feel-good factor about privacy. These factors are all valued by business users, who WhatsApp claim to have more than 50 million more of each month. For Facebook, not only is this one way to keep its pledge on improving privacy, but this is also an important stepping-stone in the integration and the interoperability of WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.  Disappearing messages is also one of many augmentations of the WhatsApp service (along with WhatsApp Business and a new storage feature) that will keep this very successful free app up-to-date and relevant to current user needs going forward.

A hapless scammer pretending to be from a broadband network got more than he bargained for when he accidentally called (and tried to work his scam) on the cyber-crime squad of an Australian police force.

Claimed To Be From Broadband Network

The scammer, claiming to be from Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), which does not make such calls to end-users, accidentally called the Financial and Cybercrime Investigation Branch (FCIB) of South Australia.  The purpose of the call appeared to direct the recipient to a website imitating the NBN website. Once there, the call recipient would be encouraged to download remote access software onto their computer with the ultimate aim of gaining access to personal information, including passwords for online banking details.

Tech Support Hoax

The caller, who is believed to have been part of a group of scammers calling Adelaide landlines, claimed to be a tech support person and that the call recipient needed to download software in order to fix an Internet problem (after an alleged hack).

Police Answered

Unfortunately for the scammer, the call was answered by a member of the FCIB who then used secure software in order to safely follow the caller’s instructions and thereby understand the true nature of the scam.

Directed To A Poorly Designed Website

The member of the FCIB reported being directed by the scammer to a “poorly designed” website where they were told to carry out the steps needed to download software.  The FCIB member reported seeing that the fake website had Web-hosting text preceding the .com, thereby indicating that it was not affiliated with the NBN and was most probably a fake.

Following failed attempts by the scammer to convince the FCIB member to download the software (malware), the scammer terminated the call.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Luckily, in this case, the FCIB were able to see exactly how a group of scammers were operating and were able to issue detailed warnings in the local area.  This story is a reminder to all that no-one is safe from scam calls and that scammers using phishing and social engineering pose a serious risk.  Even though many businesses may know that legitimate companies do not call out of the blue and ask people to download software, all staff in an organisation should be made aware (e.g. by training) of the policy and procedures regarding this kind of risk (e.g. never to click on unfamiliar emails, links or to download unfamiliar software). Businesses should instruct staff that if they are in any doubt of who a caller is, hang up and only call the organisation back on the known, reputable number.  Incidents should, ideally, be reported to the police, Action Fraud, and to the relevant member of staff in the call recipient’s company.

That said, cyber-criminals are becoming more sophisticated in their attacks on businesses, and a Proofpoint Human Factor report from last year showed that as many as 99 per cent of cyber-attacks now involve social engineering through cloud applications, email or social media.  This illustrates how attackers are now much keener on trying to enable a macro, or trick people into opening a malicious file or follow a malicious link through human error, rather than having to face the considerable and time-consuming challenge of trying to hack into the (often well-defended) systems and infrastructure of enterprises and other organisations.  Businesses should therefore boost their efforts in guarding against this type of attack.

An AI study of the language used on social media platform Reddit has revealed increasing levels of anxiety since the beginning of the pandemic.

Study

The study, by MIT and Harvard University researchers, sought to leverage natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to characterise changes in some of the world’s largest mental health (15 groups) and non-mental health support groups (11), by using AI, machine learning and topic modelling to study, and classify the language used in conversations on Reddit. The study looked for changes in 90 text-derived features of 826,961 unique users in their conversations from 2018 to 2020.

Results and Conclusions

The study revealed that levels of anxiety among those in mental health support groups spiked in posts about COVID-19 in January, two months before other support groups started posting about the pandemic. Machine learning analyses found that health anxiety emerged as a general theme across Reddit and, interestingly, the study found that the concerns of a diverse set of individuals converged i.e. the more users posted about COVID-19, the more linguistically similar the mental health support groups became to the Health/Anxiety groups.

Other Language/Stress Research

A study back in 2017, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, highlighted in the ‘Nature’ science journal, also showed how the subtleties in the language people could reveal physiological stress. The research involved 143 adults wearing audio recorders, which switched on every few minutes for two days.  The researchers then compared the language used by the volunteers with the expression in their white blood cells of 50 genes that are known to be influenced by adversity. The study found that when people are stressed, they talk less but use more “emotional intensifiers” e.g. ‘really’ or ‘incredibly’ and use fewer third-person plural pronouns, such as ‘they’ or ‘their’ because when under threat, people focus less on others and the outside world.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The AI study showed that the way certain language is used can be an identifier of those at risk from mental health problems and that textual analysis can uncover mental health complaints as they appear in real-time.  This could, in future, be used to help businesses and organisations to spot those employees who are struggling with stress and anxiety, perhaps due to work or home issues.  This could enable businesses and organisations to provide support and help at the right time, thereby addressing the needs of key employees, preventing absenteeism, uncovering potential work issues e.g. the need for training or suffering from by bullying, and could help with the retention and increased loyalty of key staff. If this kind of technology was applied across a business at this time (during the pandemic), it may prove to be another useful tool in helping to manage the softer factors of a physically divided workforce, where stress may not have been spotted by colleagues due to everyone working from home.