News
8
IN BRIEF
THE WORLD’S
GONE MAD!8 – 21 June 2022 • Issue 633Tom Birchy (pictured), the self-
proclaimed ‘King of Leeds’, is
a video blogger who reports
from the city. He recently
asked his 170,000 followers
to order food and drink for
him via the Wetherspoons
app. They ended up spending
£2,000 and causing chaos
in the pub. Staff had to stop
serving him, and now need to
process mass refunds. Your
round, Tom?OPENREACH ADDS 56
TOWNS TO FULL-FIBRE
Cambridge, Dartford,
Hartlepool and Peterborough
are among 56 towns added
to Openreach’s schedule
to receive Fibre-to-the-
Premises (FTTP) broadband.
To see all 56, plus locations
previously added, download
Openreach’s PDF from
http://www.snipca.com/
(starts automatically). The
new towns are highlighted in
dark blue/grey.UPDATE YOUR OLD
NVIDIA CARDS
Nvidia has taken the unusual
step of releasing security
driver updates for graphics
cards it no longer supports.
The fixes are for the GTX
600 and GTX 700 range of
cards, which Nvidia sold and
supported between 2012
and 2021. To check if you
need the updates, visit
http://www.snipca.com/41992 and
click the Supported Products
tab. If so, click the green
Download button.Over 1.5m ‘abandoned’ apps on
Google & Apple stores
apps, removing apps that no
longer function as intended,
don’t follow current review
guidelines, or are outdated”.
Apple’s policy affects apps
that haven’t been updated
within the past three years,
and those that “fail to meet
a minimal download
threshold”, which covers
apps that haven’t been
downloaded at all or
“extremely few times” during
a rolling 12-month period.
Anyone who has already
installed a removed app will
be able to continue using it,
but it will be delisted from
the App Store, preventing any
new downloads.
Google is also stepping up
measures to remove old apps
by forcing developers to make
their apps work with either
Android 11 (released 2020) or
Android 12 (released 2021).T
here are more outdated
apps in Google and
Apple’s stores than those
being actively updated,
according to new research.
Analytics firm Pixelate
said there are 1.5 million
“abandoned” apps that haven’t
been updated in two years,
outnumbering the 1.3 million
that had been updated in the
past six months (www.snipca.
com/41994). Apps that aren’t
being regularly updated can
pose a security risk.
In total, Pixelate analysed
five million apps across both
stores in the first three
months of 2022, finding
650,000 neglected apps in
Apple’s store, and 869,
in Google’s.
It also identified 314,
“super abandoned” apps
that haven’t been updated in
over five years.The report comes a few
weeks after Apple started
emailing developers to warn
them that it would remove
apps that haven’t been
updated “in a significant
amount of time”. It gave
developers 30 days to
update their apps.
On its App Store
Improvements page (www.
snipca.com/41995), Apple
says it is “implementing an
ongoing process of evaluatingGovernment’s new app protects you
from foreign spies online
T
he Government has
launched a new app to
prevent people being tricked
online by foreign spies.
Called ‘Think Before You
Link’, it will help individuals
identify personal profiles that
may be fake, and allow them
to report anything suspicious.
MI5 claims it has seen over
10,000 attempts by spies to
fool UK users on sites such as
Facebook and LinkedIn.
Director General Ken
McCallum said: “Foreign spies
are actively working to build
relationships with those
working in government, in
high-tech business and in
academia”.
The app has been launched
by the Centre for the
Protection of NationalInfrastructure. Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster Steve
Barclay, Lead Minister for
Cyber Security, said fake
profiles are being created on
an “industrial scale”, with
many being used to gain
national-security information.
In the first half of 2021
alone, LinkedIn prevented
11.6m fake accounts from
being registered.
Current and former civil
servants are attractive targets
for scammers because of
their experience and
knowledge, the Government
said. Many are contacted on
LinkedIn by unknown users
promising well-paid
consultancy work.
Research from Portsmouth
University suggests thataround 16.8m LinkedIn users
in the UK may have accepted
contacts from unknown
people, and that awareness of
the threat from spies using
fake profiles is lower than
other online threats.
To install the app, search for
‘Think Before You Link’ on the
Google Play Store (Android) or
Apple App Store (iOS).