Google researchers have exposed details of multiple security flaws in its rival Apple's Safari web browser that allowed users' browsing behavior to be tracked [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], despite the fact that the affected tool was specifically designed to protect their privacy. From a report: The flaws, which were ironically found in an anti-tracking feature known as Intelligent Tracking Prevention, were first disclosed by Google to Apple in August last year. In a soon-to-be published paper seen by the Financial Times, researchers in Google's cloud team have since identified five different types of potential attack that could have resulted from the vulnerabilities, allowing third parties to obtain "sensitive private information about the user's browsing habits." "You would not expect privacy-enhancing technologies to introduce privacy risks," said Lukasz Olejnik, an independent security researcher who has seen the paper. "If exploited or used, [these vulnerabilities] would allow unsanctioned and uncontrollable user tracking. Apple rolled out Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017, with the specific aim of protecting Safari browser users from being tracked around the web by advertisers' and other third-parties' cookies.

A report investigating the potential hack of Jeff Bezos' iPhone indicates that forensic investigators found a suspicious file but no evidence of any malware on the phone. Motherboard: It also says that investigators had to reset Bezos's iTunes backup password because investigators didn't have it to access the backup of his phone. The latter suggests that Bezos may have forgotten his password. The report, obtained by Motherboard, indicates that investigators set up a secure lab to examine the phone and its artifacts and spent two days poring over the device but were unable to find any malware on it. Instead, they only found a suspicious video file sent to Bezos on May 1, 2018 that "appears to be an Arabic language promotional film about telecommunications." That file shows an image of the Saudi Arabian flag and Swedish flags and arrived with an encrypted downloader. Because the downloader was encrypted this delayed or further prevented "study of the code delivered along with the video." Investigators determined the video or downloader were suspicious only because Bezos' phone subsequently began transmitting large amounts of data. "[W]ithin hours of the encrypted downloader being received, a massive and unauthorized exfiltration of data from Bezos' phone began, continuing and escalating for months thereafter," the report states.

"The amount of data being transmitted out of Bezos' phone changed dramatically after receiving the WhatsApp video file and never returned to baseline. Following execution of the encrypted downloader sent from MBS' account, egress on the device immediately jumped by approximately 29,000 percent," it notes. "Forensic artifacts show that in the six (6) months prior to receiving the WhatsApp video, Bezos' phone had an average of 430KB of egress per day, fairly typical of an iPhone. Within hours of the WhatsApp video, egress jumped to 126MB. The phone maintained an unusually high average of 101MB of egress data per day for months thereafter, including many massive and highly atypical spikes of egress data. The digital forensic results, combined with a larger investigation, interviews, research, and expert intelligence information, led the investigators "to assess Bezos' phone was compromised via tools procured by Saud al Qahtani," the report states.

Many police departments across the United States already have the ability to crack mobile devices, including the iPhone. From a report: Over the past three months, OneZero sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to over 50 major police departments, sheriffs, and prosecutors around the country asking for information about their use of phone-cracking technology. Hundreds of documents from these agencies reveal that law enforcement in at least 11 states spent over $4 million in the last decade on devices and software designed to get around passwords and access information stored on phones. OneZero obtained documents from law enforcement agencies in New York, California, Florida, Texas, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico, and Massachusetts.

These agencies included district attorneys' offices, local police departments, and county sheriffs' offices. The number of offices with access to phone-cracking tools across the country is likely far greater than what OneZero uncovered. Not all agencies responded to OneZero's request for documents. Some departments and offices claimed the records were exempt from public release. Others told OneZero they would need several months and thousands of dollars to provide the information.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook believes augmented reality, or technology that overlays virtual objects onto the real world, is "the next big thing" that is poised to "pervade our entire lives." From a report: Shanahan asked Cook about major developments in tech he expects in the next five to 10 years. "I'm excited about AR," said the Big Tech CEO, citing augmented reality as an emerging tech space to watch. "My view is it's the next big thing, and it will pervade our entire lives." [...] Cook also sees applications for AR helping with hands-on tasks. "You may be under the car changing the oil, and you're not sure exactly how to do it. You can use AR," he said. Interestingly, the tech CEO sees benefits for AR and connecting people, more than other available technologies. "I think it's something that doesn't isolate people. We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I've always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies."

Apple dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company's iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing six sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The tech giant's reversal, about two years ago, has not previously been reported. It shows how much Apple has been willing to help U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite taking a harder line in high-profile legal disputes with the government and casting itself as a defender of its customers' information. The long-running tug of war between investigators' concerns about security and tech companies' desire for user privacy moved back into the public spotlight last week, as U.S. Attorney General William Barr took the rare step of publicly calling on Apple to unlock two iPhones used by a Saudi Air Force officer who shot dead three Americans at a Pensacola, Florida naval base last month.

U.S. President Donald Trump piled on, accusing Apple on Twitter of refusing to unlock phones used by "killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements." Republican and Democratic senators sounded a similar theme in a December hearing, threatening legislation against end-to-end encryption, citing unrecoverable evidence of crimes against children. Apple did in fact did turn over the shooter's iCloud backups in the Pensacola case, and said it rejected the characterization that it "has not provided substantive assistance." Behind the scenes, Apple has provided the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with more sweeping help, not related to any specific probe.

Everyone knows that the global corporate tax system needs to be overhauled, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Monday, backing changes to global rules that are currently under consideration. From a report: The growth of internet giants such as Apple has pushed international tax rules to the limit, prompting the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to pursue global reforms over where multinational firms should be taxed. The reforms being examined center around the booking of profits by multinational firms in low-tax countries such as Ireland where they have bases -- and where Cook was speaking on Monday -- rather than where most of their customers are.

"I think logically everybody knows it needs to be rehauled, I would certainly be the last person to say that the current system or the past system was the perfect system. I'm hopeful and optimistic that they (the OECD) will find something," Cook said. "It's very complex to know how to tax a multinational... We desperately want it to be fair," the Apple CEO added after receiving an inaugural award from the Irish state agency responsible for attracting foreign companies recognizing the contribution of multinationals in the country.

The FBI is pressing Apple to help it break into a terrorist's iPhones, but the government can hack into the devices without the technology giant, according to experts in cybersecurity and digital forensics. From a report: Investigators can exploit a range of security vulnerabilities -- available directly or through providers such as Cellebrite and Grayshift -- to break into the phones, the security experts said. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the perpetrator of a Dec. 6 terrorist attack at a Navy base in Florida, had an iPhone 5 and iPhone 7, models that were first released in 2012 and 2016, respectively. Alshamrani died and the handsets were locked, leaving the FBI looking for ways to hack into the devices. "A 5 and a 7? You can absolutely get into that," said Will Strafach, a well-known iPhone hacker who now runs the security company Guardian Firewall. "I wouldn't call it child's play, but it's not super difficult." That counters the U.S. government's stance. Attorney General William Barr slammed Apple on Monday, saying the company hasn't done enough to help the FBI break into the iPhones.

"We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements," President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday. The comments add to pressure on Apple to create special ways for the authorities to access iPhones. Apple has refused to build such backdoors, saying they would be used by bad actors, too. Indeed, Strafach and other security experts said Apple wouldn't need to create a backdoor for the FBI to access the iPhones that belonged to Alshamrani. Further reading: The FBI Got Data From A Locked iPhone 11 Pro Max -- So Why Is It Demanding Apple Unlock Older Phones?

Apple's recent purchase of Seattle-based AI company Xnor.ai is leaving Wyze's affordable cameras without the people detection feature. The Verge reports: Cameras from fellow Seattle-based company Wyze, including the Wyze Cam V2 and Wyze Cam Pan, have utilized Xnor.ai's on-device people detection since last summer. But now that Apple owns the company, it's no longer available. Some people on Wyze's forum are noting that the beta firmware removing the people detection has already started to roll out. Oddly enough, word of this lapse in service isn't anything new. Wyze issued a statement in November 2019 saying that Xnor.ai had terminated their contract (though its reason for doing so wasn't as clear then as it is today), and that a firmware update slated for mid-January 2020 would remove the feature from those cameras.

There's a bright side to this loss, though, even if Apple snapping up Xnor.ai makes Wyze's affordable cameras less appealing in the interim. Wyze says that it's working on its own in-house version of people detection for launch at some point this year. And whether it operates on-device via "edge AI" computing like Xnor.ai's does, or by authenticating through the cloud, it will be free for users when it launches. That's good and all, but the year just started, and it's a little worrying Wyze hasn't followed up with a specific time frame for its replacement of the feature. Two days ago, Wyze's social media community manager stated that the company was "making great progress" on its forums, but they didn't offer up when it would be available.

On Monday, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) discussed the idea of introducing "binding measures" that would require chargers that fit all mobile phones and portable electronic devices. The company that would be impacted most by this legislation would be Apple and its iPhone, which uses a Lightning cable while most new Android phones use USB-C ports for charging. ZDNet reports: The EU introduced the voluntary Radio Equipment Directive in 2014, but MEPs believe the effort fell short of the objectives. "The voluntary agreements between different industry players have not yielded the desired results," MEPs said. The proposed more stringent measures are aimed at reducing electronic waste, which is estimated to amount to 51,000 tons per year in old chargers.

Apple last year argued that regulations to standardize chargers for phones would "freeze innovation rather than encourage it" and it claimed the proposal was "bad for the environment and unnecessarily disruptive for customers." Noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reckons Apple has a different idea in store: getting rid of the Lightning port and not replacing it with USB-C, which is a standard that Apple doesn't have complete control over. According to the analyst, Apple plans to remove the Lightning connector on a flagship iPhone to be released in 2021. Instead it would rely on wireless charging.

Most modern iPhones running iOS 13 can now be used as a built-in phone security key for Google apps. 9to5Google reports: A built-in phone security key differs from the Google Prompt, though both essentially share the same UI. The latter push-based approach is found in the Google Search app and Gmail, while today's announcement is more akin to a physical USB-C/Lightning key in terms of being resistant to phishing attempts and verifying who you are. Your phone security key needs to be physically near (within Bluetooth range) the device that wants to log-in. The login prompt is not just being sent over an internet connection.

With an update to the Google Smart Lock app on iOS this week, "you can now set up your phone's built-in security key." According to one Googler today, the company is leveraging the Secure Enclave found on Apple's A-Series chips. Storing Touch ID, Face ID, and other cryptographic data, it was first introduced on the iPhone 5s, though that particular device no longer supports iOS 13. Anytime users enter a Google Account username and password, they'll be prompted to open Smart Lock on their nearby iPhone to confirm a sign-in. There's also the option to cancel with "No, it's not me." This only works when signing-in to Google with Chrome, while Bluetooth on both the desktop computer and phone needs to be enabled as the devices are locally communicating the confirmation request and verification.

In light of this week's rumor that a Pro Mode -- which will supposedly boost performance on Macs with Catalina operating system -- may be coming, long time developer and Apple commentator Marco Arment makes the case for a Low Power Mode on macOS. He writes: Modern hardware constantly pushes thermal and power limits, trying to strike a balance that minimizes noise and heat while maximizing performance and battery life. Software also plays a role, trying to keep everything background-updated, content-indexed, and photo-analyzed so it's ready for us when we want it, but not so aggressively that we notice any cost to performance or battery life. Apple's customers don't usually have control over these balances, and they're usually fixed at design time with little opportunity to adapt to changing circumstances or customer priorities.

The sole exception, Low Power Mode on iOS, seems to be a huge hit: by offering a single toggle that chooses a different balance, people are able to greatly extend their battery life when they know they'll need it. Mac laptops need Low Power Mode, too. I believe so strongly in its potential because I've been using it on my laptops (in a way) for years, and it's fantastic. I've been disabling Intel Turbo Boost on my laptops with Turbo Boost Switcher Pro most of the time since 2015. In 2018, I first argued for Low Power Mode on macOS with a list of possible tweaks, concluding that disabling Turbo Boost was still the best bang-for-the-buck tweak to improve battery life without a noticeable performance cost in most tasks.

Recently, as Intel has crammed more cores and higher clocks into smaller form factors and pushed thermal limits to new extremes, the gains have become even more significant. [...] With Turbo Boost disabled, peak CPU power consumption drops by 62%, with a correspondingly huge reduction in temperature. This has two massive benefits: The fans never audibly spin up. [...] It runs significantly cooler. Turbo Boost lets laptops get too hot to comfortably hold in your lap, and so much heat radiates out that it can make hands sweaty. Disable it, and the laptop only gets moderately warm, not hot, and hands stay comfortably dry. I haven't done formal battery testing on the 16-inch, since it's so difficult and time-consuming to do in a controlled way that's actually useful to people, but anecdotally, I'm seeing similar battery gains by disabling Turbo Boost that I've seen with previous laptops: significantly longer battery life that I'd estimate to be between 30-50%.

On Monday, Attorney General William Barr called on Apple to unlock the alleged phone of the Pensacola shooter -- a man who murdered three people and injured eight others on a Naval base in Florida in December. Apple has responded by essentially saying: "no." From a report: "We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation," the company said. "It was not until January 8th that we received a subpoena for information related to the second iPhone, which we responded to within hours," Apple added, countering Barr's characterization of the company being slow in its approach to the FBI's needs. However, it ends the statement in no uncertain terms: "We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys." Despite pressure from the government, Apple has long held that giving anyone the keys to users' data or a backdoor to their phones -- even in cases where terrorism or violence was involved -- would compromise every user. The company is clearly standing by those principles.

Apple's initiatives to minimize tracking by marketers is continuing to make life harder for the advertising industry, forcing advertisers to use inefficient data sources to pinpoint users. AppleInsider reports: Over the years, Apple has enhanced how it protects the privacy of its users online, typically by limiting what data can be seen by advertisers tracking different data points. Initiatives such as Intelligent Tracking Protection in Safari has helped secure more privacy by making it harder to track individual users, which advertising executives in December admitted has been "stunningly effective." While ITP and other improvements have helped to minimize the tracking of users, marketers are also being affected by another element of iOS 13, one where users are regularly notified of apps that are capturing their location in the background. The warning gives options for users to allow an app to continue to track all the time or to do so when it is open, with users often selecting the latter.

According to data from verification firm Location Sciences seen by DigiDay, approximately seven in ten iPhone users tracked by the company downloaded iOS 13 in its first six weeks of availability. Of those tracked users who installed the update, around 80% of them stopped all background tracking by apps. Ad tracking company Teemo suggests the opt-in rates to share data with apps when not in use are often below 50%, whereas three years ago, the same rates were close to 100%. The higher rates were due to it being a time when users were largely unaware there were options to disable tracking in the first place.

Attorney General William P. Barr declared on Monday that a deadly shooting last month at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., was an act of terrorism, and he asked Apple in an unusually high-profile request to provide access to two phones used by the gunman. From a report: Mr. Barr's appeal was an escalation of an ongoing fight between the Justice Department and Apple pitting personal privacy against public safety. "This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence," Mr. Barr said, calling on Apple and other technology companies to find a solution and complaining that Apple has provided no "substantive assistance."

Apple has given investigators materials from the iCloud account of the gunman, Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi air force training with the American military, who killed three sailors and wounded eight others on Dec. 6. But the company has refused to help the F.B.I. open the phones themselves, which would undermine its claims that its phones are secure.

"Shares of Apple gained 86.2% in 2019, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence," reports the Motley Fool: The tech stock's share price tracked relatively closely with momentum for the broader market for much of the year and then dramatically outperformed from September through December thanks to strong performance for its wearables products.

iPhone Sales were down from 2018, but they still came in ahead of expectations, and the company's business was lifted by strong performance for its wearables segment... Growth for Apple's services segment (which includes revenue generated from the company's mobile app store and subscription-based offerings like Apple Music) also slowed in the year. However, explosive growth for AirPods, promising momentum for the Apple Watch, and the promise of a bigger tech and feature leap for the iPhone line in 2020 powered a great year for Apple stock. Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, estimates that AirPod sales came in at roughly $6 billion in 2019 and nearly doubled compared to 2018.

The Bernstein analyst projects that AirPod revenue will hit $15 billion in 2020.

Although TiVo has an exciting new product at CES with the TiVo Stream 4K media player, it also has some bad news for DVR owners: The promised ability to stream live and recorded video from TiVo to other streaming players in the home won't happen any time soon. From a report: TiVo's vice president of consumer products and services Ted Malone said in an interview at CES that the company's Roku and Apple TV apps in particular are "in limbo." Malone wouldn't say definitively that the apps have cancelled, and he believes Android TV support may arrive at some point as a tie-in to the TiVo Stream 4K, which runs Android TV. From there, adding Fire TV support wouldn't be difficult because Fire TV apps are based on Android as well. Still, he didn't give a timeline for either. "My bet is we'll get Android, and because of that we'll get the Fire TV, because it's the same app, just different qualifications," Malone said. "I think Roku and Apple are in limbo."

Apple on Wednesday said that its services business, which includes software for things like news, gaming, apps, music and video, had its best ever year in 2019. From a report: "2019 was the biggest year for Services in Apple's history. We introduced several exciting new experiences for our customers, all while setting the standard for user privacy and security," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services in a statement. In an effort to showcase its growth to investors, Apple released a slew of engagement numbers for several of its services products. It says: Apple News has over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada. Apple Music now offers over 60 million songs in 115 countries. Apple Podcasts offers over 800,000 shows in 155 countries. Apple Card and Apple Pay are accepted in more than 150 stadiums, ballparks, arenas and entertainment venues.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The encryption debate between Apple and the F.B.I. might have found its new test case. The F.B.I. said on Tuesday that it had asked Apple for the data on two iPhones that belonged to the gunman in the shooting last month at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., possibly setting up another showdown over law enforcement's access to smartphones. Dana Boente, the F.B.I.'s general counsel, said in a letter to Apple that federal investigators could not gain access to the iPhones because they were locked and encrypted and their owner, Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani of the Saudi Royal Air Force, is dead. The F.B.I. has a search warrant for the devices and is seeking Apple's assistance executing it, the people said.

Apple said in a statement that it had given the F.B.I. all the data "in our possession" related to the Pensacola case when it was asked a month ago. "We will continue to support them with the data we have available," the company said. Apple regularly complies with court orders to turn over information it has on its servers, such as iCloud data, but it has long argued that it does not have access to material stored only on a locked, encrypted iPhone. Before sending the letter, the F.B.I. checked with other government agencies and its national security allies to see if they had a way into the devices -- but they did not, according to one of the people familiar with the investigation. "The official said the F.B.I. was not asking Apple to create a so-called backdoor or technological solution to get past its encryption that must be shared with the government," the report adds. "Instead, the government is seeking the data that is on the two phones, the official said."

"Apple has argued in the past that obtaining such data would require it to build a backdoor, which it said would set a dangerous precedent for user privacy and cybersecurity." Apple did not comment on the request.

An anonymous reader shares a blog post from Kevin Rooke, investment specialist and co-founder of blockchain marketing agency agency0x: Imagine a startup with $12 billion of revenue, 125%+ YoY revenue growth (two years in a row), and Apple-esque gross margins (30-50%). Without knowing anything else about the business, what would you value it at? $50 billion? $100 billion? More? That's Apple's AirPods business, the fastest-growing segment of the world's most valuable company. Though Apple doesn't share sales numbers for AirPods, industry analysts have converged on estimated sales numbers for each of the last 3 years. In 2017, Apple sold an estimated 15 million devices, each priced at $150. That gave Apple a $2.25 billion revenue boost, only a 1% boost to Apple's $215 billion iPhone revenue.

But in 2018, AirPods sales began to quiet Apple bears. 35 million pairs were sold, still priced at $150. That gave Apple an additional $5.25 billion in revenue, then representing 2.4% of iPhone revenue. And in 2019, Apple has pulled off yet another incredible year of AirPods sales. Apple sold an estimated 60 million units, but in 2019 the prices increased too. Apple's second generation AirPods launched at $200, and their newest variation, the AirPods Pro sell for $250. Assuming an even split of sales between Gen 1, Gen 2, and AirPods Pro, Airpods revenue was $12 billion in 2019. That's 4.5% of Apple's iPhone revenue. Investors are paying attention now. AirPods make as much money as Spotify, Twitter, Snap, and Shopify combined. And considering their triple-digit growth two years in a row, I would be shocked if AirPods didn't earn more money than Uber in 2020.

Some app developers are concerned that frequent iOS 13 notifications will scare users away. From a report: "'Facebook' has used your location 107 times in the background over the past 3 days. Do you want to continue to allow background location use?" Such pop-up notifications are frequent for many iPhone users who have downloaded Apple's iOS 13. They arrive every few days for each app that tracks location while not in use and includes maps. Apple touted the new notifications as a way to make users more mindful of how much tracking goes on even when they aren't using their phones. Each notification gives users the option to let the app use their location data only when it is in use or if they agree for the app to track their locations at all times. Since iOS 13 was released in September, tens of millions of people have moved to block apps' ability to track their locations when not in use, according to an estimate from Location Sciences, a company that verifies mobile location data.

Some app developers, particularly the ones whose business models rely on being able to access users' locations at all times, are concerned that the iOS 13 notifications will hurt their apps' adoption. Seven of them signed an email to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook addressing these concerns in August. The signatories included Life360, an app that lets family members track one another's location and can summon an ambulance immediately in the event of an auto accident, and Tile, a maker of tracking devices for items like wallets and keys. Both Life360 and Tile rely on constantly tracking all their users and compete with Find My, a preinstalled Apple app that helps users locate a lost iPhone -- and isn't subject to the same notifications. [...] Apple's iOS 13 location-tracking changes have hit the supply of mobile location data available for advertising and analytics, said Jason Smith, chief business officer of Location Sciences. He said the amount of location data gathered by apps while not in use had dropped by 70% since iOS 13 was released.