What we think of this fortnight’s top tech news stories and rumours,
and how they affect you
Discuss web news at http://www.facebook.com/webusermagazine 13 - 26 November 2019^9
Need to Know
version 2.19.222. To enable
the feature, open WhatsApp
and go to Settings, Account,
Privacy. There, you’ll see a
‘Fingerprint lock’ page, which
lets you turn on the feature
and set a length of time
before the app automatically
locks – immediately, after one
minute or after half an hour.
If your phone starts to ring
with a WhatsApp call, there’s
no need to fiddle with a
fingerprint because you can
answer calls without
unlocking the app.What do we think?
It makes sense for apps to
use advanced security
features such as fingerprint
recognition, not least
because it makes them fasterextensions more easily.What do we think?
This move will catch a few
users out, but it’s a better
way to manage browser
extensions going forward
and follows a similar decision
by Google last year to block
add-ons from outside the
Chrome Web Store. ByWhatsApp adds Android fingerprint unlocking
Firefox blocks sideloading of extensions
to unlock and saves you
having to memorise yet
another PIN or password.
But it’s worth remembering
that this only protects you
from someone picking up
your phone and reading
your messages, not against
hackers cracking the app
and accessing your data,
and it won’t stop
WhatsApp suffering
security breaches and
flaws. The new option is
worth enabling, but you
should also turn on
two-factor authentication
if you haven’t already –
for WhatsApp and other
apps and accounts.
See our feature on page
48 for more secret tips for
WhatsApp.making the shift in two
stages, no-one should lose
an add-on they want to
keep, but plenty of users
will be able to get rid of
those that were installed
by someone else using
their computer. It’s a
sensible solution to a small
problem that has been
causing a lot of headaches.What happened?
Tired of tapping a PIN into
your phone to protect your
WhatsApp chats? If your
Android phone has a
fingerprint scanner, you
can now use it to keep
nosy parkers from reading
your private conversations,
though this comes months
after the same feature was
introduced in the iOS
version of the app.
The new feature means
you use your smartphone’s
fingerprint scanner to open
the app, even after
unlocking your phone,
which makes it impossible
for someone else to pick
up your handset and read
your messages. So far,
there are no plans to addWhat happened?
Browser developer Mozilla
is set to end support for
sideloading extensions into
Firefox to combat security
threats from unofficial
sources.
Most Firefox extensions
are installed via the official
Mozilla Add-ons repository
(addons.mozilla.org) but
you can also get them from
other sources. Sometimes,
the only way to get a
certain add-on is to
download it to a specific
location on your PC, but
this means the extension
runs on all instances of
Firefox on that computer,
even on user profiles that
haven’t actually installed
the tool. That’s a problem if
the extension contains
malware or causes
compatibility issues withfacial recognition for phones
that support it.How will it affect you?
Fingerprint unlocking will
work on all versions of
Android with a scanner,
provided WhatsApp has
been updated to at leastthe browser, and means that
other Firefox users on your
computer may not be able to
find and delete the extension.How will it affect you?
Firefox will stop support for
sideloading extensions over
two phases. In version 73, it
will still accept sideloaded
files but they’ll be moved to
the user’s individual profile
and installed as a regular
add-on, so you won’t lose
any of your sideloaded
add-ons. Version 73 is in beta
release, as of the beginning
of December, with the stable
version following in February- In the next version of
the browser, scheduled for
release in March, sideloading
will be completely
unsupported and users will
get the ability to delete
installed sideloaded