Tag Archives: aapl

Let Facebook Latin America Chief Go, Brazilian Judge Tells Police

A Brazilian judge ordered Facebook ( FB )’s vice president for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, out of jail on Wednesday, one day after Dzodan had been arrested in Sao Paulo for refusing to hand over WhatsApp messages related to an organized-crime and drug-trafficking investigation. Judge Ruy Pinheiro considered Dzodan’s arrest “unlawful coercion,” the court said in a statement, according to a report by Agence France-Presse . “It seems to me that the extreme measure of imprisonment was hurried,” Pinheiro said, according to AFP. The judge’s order comes a day after executives from tech giant Apple ( AAPL ) and officials from the FBI faced off before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee as part of a showdown over whether Apple must develop a way to unlock the iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple has said that it won’t comply, seeking to safeguard product users’ privacy. Facebook, the owner of the popular WhatsApp mobile phone messaging tool, denies obstructing the police probe and criticized Brazil’s approach. “We are disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook,” Facebook said in a statement. “Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have.” WhatsApp has said that it had no technical means for cooperating , since it doesn’t store its users’ messages after they’ve been delivered, and has also been rolling out end-to-end encryption to keep others from being able to intercept or compromise those messages, according to a Wall Street Journal report. WhatsApp is popular in Brazil, where half of the country’s 204 million residents rely on the free text- and voice-messaging service. Many Brazilians depend on WhatsApp for their day-to-day communications, the WSJ said, since texting in Brazil is about 55 times more expensive than in the U.S., according to advisory firm Activate. In December, a different judge ordered the shutdown of WhatsApp throughout the entire country for 48 hours after the service failed to comply with a criminal investigation. The ruling affected millions of users before it was overturned the next day. Facebook stock was down a fraction in afternoon trading in the stock market today , near 109. Apple stock also was down a fraction, near 100, after rising 4% Tuesday.

Apple Pay Most Sought-After Mobile Payment Service By Retailers

Apple Pay is the most-requested mobile digital payment service among retailers, according to a recent survey of companies that supply point-of-sale terminals to stores. Piper Jaffray surveyed 507 vendors of merchant-processing systems. The survey found that 44% of their customers are using or have asked about implementing mobile digital payment systems. Of those merchants, 67% desired Apple ’s ( AAPL ) Apple Pay. Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Android Pay and Google Wallet were second with 18%, followed by PayPal ( PYPL ) (8%) and Samsung Pay (7%). Merchants who accept tap-and-pay services typically are able to accept multiple digital wallets, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a report Wednesday. “It is telling that PayPal, who has been the leader in digital payments, so significantly under-indexed Apple Pay and Android Pay,” Munster said. “PayPal did announce recently at Mobile World Congress (MWC) that it would be enabling NFC payments, though the timeline was not disclosed.” The strong interest in digital payment systems and the number of requests for Apple Pay “are positive signs for the future demand of digital wallets and the strength of Apple Pay’s brand at point of sale,” Munster said. Juniper Research predicted Tuesday that the number of consumers using mobile phones to make payments at retail will reach 148 million worldwide this year, up 64% from 90 million in 2015. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Software Updates To Thump ‘Motivated’ Internet Of Things Hackers

SAN FRANCISCO — Gemalto exec David Etue hinged the success of the nascent Internet of Things industry — and its 30 billion connected devices in four years — to an efficient software update process. Because when 30 billion devices are connected to the Internet, there’s a lot that can go wrong … and fast. “Our adversaries are highly motivated,” Etue told attendees at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, a major annual gathering of security companies. “But if we can get a secure software update process right, at least we can make changes.” He added: “If we get this right, this puts us in a position for long-term success.” France-based Gemalto competes in the software application and secured devices market, and therefore has a big dog in the upcoming Internet of Things fight for market share. Although the IoT presents a huge market opportunity for tech and pure cybersecurity players, its mass scale also terrifies chief information security officers, Etue said. “We don’t generally intentionally put our IoT-connected devices in hostile territory,” he said. “We might put them on the local Starbucks ( SBUX ) Wi-Fi. … That’s not that scary when it’s your fitness meter. It’s pretty scary when it’s a pacemaker.” On the business side, retail stores use sensors to count shoppers — information hedge funds used to pay people to gather outside brick-and-mortar establishments. Farmers use devices to track the development of seeds. Tesla Motors ( TSLA ), Apple ( AAPL ), Toyota ( TM ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Ford ( F ) are already racing toward autonomous vehicles. “So we’re seeing a lot of demand to monetize this data,” Etue said. But on the flip side, consumers are spooked after a fault in Fiat Chrysler ‘s ( FCAU ) Jeep Cherokee GPS system allowed it to be hacked, Rapid7 ( RPD ) researchers were able to hack baby monitors and Santa Cruz, Calif., residents protested smart meters. “We get really excited about the device, but forget about where that data is from and how it’s being managed,” Etue said. He suggests consumers and developers ask themselves a series of questions before taking on Internet of Things devices. Most of those questions center on how, where and what data are stored; whether it’s accessible by a third party; and who manages the accessibility. “We’re never going to get this right the first time,” he said. “We’re going to have to change.” Image provided by Shutterstock .