Long-time Slashdot reader trolman scared this scathing editorial by security researcher Brian Krebs: If you are somehow under the impression that you -- the customer -- are in control over the security, privacy and integrity of your mobile phone service, think again. And you'd be forgiven if you assumed the major wireless carriers or federal regulators had their hands firmly on the wheel. No, a series of recent court cases and unfortunate developments highlight the sad reality that the wireless industry today has all but ceded control over this vital national resource to cybercriminals, scammers, corrupt employees and plain old corporate greed...

Incessantly annoying and fraudulent robocalls. Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptick in SIM-swapping attacks that lead to multi-million dollar cyberheists...

Is there any hope that lawmakers or regulators will do anything about these persistent problems? Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy, said the answer -- at least in this administration -- is probably a big "no."

"The takeaway here is the complete and total abdication of any oversight of the mobile wireless industry," Sohn told KrebsOnSecurity. "Our enforcement agencies aren't doing anything on these topics right now, and we have a complete and total breakdown of oversight of these incredibly powerful and important companies."

Long-time Slashdot reader freelunch reports that Google Voice "has announced via email that they are ending one of their most popular features -- sending transcripts of voice mails via text message. The cited reason is carrier message blocking."

From Google's email: It has come to our attention that certain carriers are blocking the delivery of these messages because they are automated and, at times, contain transcripts that resulted from unsolicited robocalls.

We can no longer ensure these messages will be delivered, so unfortunately we are turning down the feature. We have been slowly rolling out these changes and expect them to be fully deployed by 9 August 2019. No action is needed on your part.

However, the Get voicemail via email continues to be supported. As an alternative, the Google Voice iOS, Android and web apps can always be used to check voicemail and view transcripts.

A new study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging found that blood pressure can be measured accurately by taking a quick video selfie. An anonymous reader quotes this announcement from the University of Toronto: Kang Lee, a professor of applied psychology and human development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Canada Research Chair in developmental neuroscience, was the lead author of the study... Using a technology co-discovered by Lee and his postdoctoral researcher Paul Zheng called transdermal optical imaging, researchers measured the blood pressure of 1,328 Canadian and Chinese adults by capturing two-minute videos of their faces on an iPhone. Results were compared to standard devices used to measure blood pressure. The researchers found they were able to measure three types of blood pressure with 95 to 96 per cent accuracy.
Lee co-founded a company to turn their technology into a smartphone app (named Anura) that reports stress-level measurements and resting heart rate from a 30-second video of your face -- with plans to release a new version also returning blood pressure results sometime this fall in China.

The university also notes that the researchers now hope to extend their technology so it can measure blood-gluclose levels and cholesterol.

According to 9to5Google, Google's upcoming Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones will feature 90Hz refresh rates, 6GB of RAM, and a DSLR attachment, among other features not reported until now. From the report: First, the basics: There will be a Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, and they will both more or less have the same features. They are phones. As we've already seen, they will have glass on the front and back, and a large camera bump. The have a sizable top bezel on the front housing the Soli radar chip, the speaker, a single front shooter, and the suite of sensors for face unlock. Other familiar aesthetic flourishes like a colored lock button and the usual 'G' logo on the back are also in tow. Things get a little interesting with the display specs. Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL will have 5.7-inch and 6.3-inch OLED displays, respectively -- the smaller is Full HD+, while the larger is Quad HD+. We can confirm now, though, that both will be 90 Hz displays, a feature Google is planning to call "Smooth Display."

We also have word on the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL camera specs. There are two sensors on the rear, one of which is a 12MP shooter with phase-detect auto-focus. Also, confirming details that we unearthed in the Google Camera app, the other rear sensor on the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL is a 16MP telephoto lens. Another interesting tidbit on the camera side: We're told Google is developing a DSLR-like attachment for the Pixel 4 that may become an available accessory. In other Pixel 4 specs, the smaller 5.7-inch Google Pixel 4 will have a 2,800 mAh battery, while the larger model will have a 3,700 mAh battery. That means, compared to last year, the smaller Pixel will have a slightly smaller battery (down from 2,915 mAh), while the larger Pixel will have a notably beefier one (up from 3,430 mAh). Both devices will pack the Snapdragon 855, get an appreciated bump to 6GB of RAM, and will be available in both 64GB and 128GB variants in the United States. Finally, we can confirm that both Pixel 4 models will have stereo speakers, the Titan M security module that was introduced with the Pixel 3, and of course, the latest version of Android with 3 years of software support. We're also told to expect that, like previous years, Google will show off some new Assistant features that will be exclusive to Pixel 4.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Netflix thought I was four different people. I was being paid through an app to watch its trailers over and over again, racking up digital points I could eventually trade for Amazon gift cards or real cash. But rather than just use my own phone, I bought four Android devices to churn through the trailers simultaneously, bringing in more money. I made a small "phone farm," able to fabricate engagement with advertisements and programs from companies like Netflix, as well as video game trailers, celebrity gossip shows, and sports too. No one was really watching the trailers, but Netflix didn't need to know that. The goal was to passively run these phones 24/7, with each collecting a fraction of a penny for each ad they "watched."

Hobbyists and those looking to make a bit of money across the U.S. have been doing the same, buying dozens or hundreds of phones to generate revenue so they can afford some extra household goods, cover a bill, buy a case of beer, or earn more income without driving for Uber or delivering for Grubhub. The farms are similar to those found overseas, often in China, where rows and rows of phones click and scroll through social media or other apps to simulate the engagement of a real human. Every few months, a video of these Chinese farms goes viral, but in bedroom cupboards, stacks in corners of living rooms, or custom setups in their garage, American phone farmers are doing a similar thing, albeit on a smaller scale. Motherboard spoke to eight people who run farms of various sizes, most of whom are located in the U.S.

No country on earth has benefited from President Trump's trade fight with China more than Vietnam. From a report: The country's factories have swelled with orders as American tariffs cause companies to reconsider making their products in China. Now, more big technology firms are looking to bulk up their manufacturing operations in Vietnam, lifting the ambitions of a nation already well on its way to becoming a powerhouse maker of smartphones and other high-end gadgets. First, though, Vietnam needs to get better at making the little plastic casings on your earbuds.

Vu Huu Thang's company in the northern city of Bac Ninh, Bac Viet Technology, produces small plastic parts for Canon printers, Korg musical instruments, and Samsung cellphones and phone accessories, including earbuds. He said it would be hard for his firm to compete against Chinese suppliers as long as he had to buy 70 to 100 tons of imported plastic material every month, most of it made in China. "Vietnam cannot compare with China," Mr. Thang said. "When we buy materials, it's 5, 10 percent more expensive than China already." And the Vietnamese market is too small, he said, to entice plastic producers to set up plants here.

Millions of first-time internet consumers from the Ivory Coast to India and Indonesia are connecting to the web on smart feature phones that cost only about $25. "[T]hese hybrid phones, fueled by inexpensive mobile data, provide some basic apps and internet access in addition to calling and texting," the Wall Street Journal reports. From the report: While global smartphone sales began sliding last year as markets became saturated, smart feature phone shipments tripled to around 75 million from 2017, according to research firm Counterpoint. Some 84 million are likely to be shipped this year. Even as rich nations start to roll out 5G technologies, some 3.4 billion people around the world remain cut off from the internet, according to We Are Social, another research firm. Most of them already use traditional, unconnected mobile phones, meaning they can easily make the transition to similarly shaped devices capable of high-speed web connections.

Smart feature phones aren't only inexpensive, but they also have physical keypads that are less intimidating than touch screens for those new to the technology. Meanwhile, their batteries last for days, a bonus in places where electricity is unreliable. There is a trade-off for the low price. The devices typically have slower and less powerful components, only basic cameras and their screens are usually just a few inches in size, factors that contribute to their longer battery life. There also are fewer apps available for smart feature phones.

schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: It may sound strange at first, but a team of researchers in Australia has come up with a method to predict your personality traits using just the accelerometer in your phone. Well, that and your call and messaging activity logs. Also, the system works for some traits better than others. But it's an interesting take on how we may find connections through such seemingly unrelated things. In this case, we start at the Big Five personality traits. These have been used in psychology since the 1980's to help classify five dominant parts of our personalities. These five traits are extraversion (outgoing vs reserved), openness (curious vs cautious), neuroticism (confidence vs nervous), agreeableness (compassionate vs detached) and conscientiousness (organised vs easy-going).

The researchers analysed 52 people's phone habits between March 2010 and July 2011. Each participant was given a phone with sensing and collection software on it, which gave the researchers information on when and how much the phone was moving (accelerometer data), as well as the number and time of day of all calls and messages. The participants were also asked to complete a Big Five survey to score their personalities on the five traits. Then, the team also created a list of features related to the aspects of phone use they measured, that might potentially determine personality traits; for example, physical activity on weekend nights might predict extraversion, or the number of calls one makes might predict agreeableness. After crunching the numbers, the researchers found that some of the phone features really did predict some of the personality traits for the 52 participants. The phone data best predicted neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion, but had trouble predicting the other two traits, especially openness. "There's also the issue of whether the team were actually looking at personality traits, or if the personality traits could be masked by other factors," the report adds. "For instance, neuroticism may be associated with different regularity of activity intensity in the night, however we cannot rule out many other possible explanations (e.g. neurotic people are more prone to stress and therefore - if this is the case, anyone with different personality traits that are stressed will still exhibit the same results)."

The study has been published in the journal Computer.

schwit1 quotes IEEE Spectrum: In 2017, members of the mobile telephony industry group 3GPP were bickering over whether to speed the development of 5G standards. One proposal, originally put forward by Vodafone and ultimately agreed to by the rest of the group, promised to deliver 5G networks sooner by developing more aspects of 5G technology simultaneously.

Adopting that proposal may have also meant pushing some decisions down the road. One such decision concerned how 5G networks should encode wireless signals. 3GPP's Release 15, which laid the foundation for 5G, ultimately selected orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a holdover from 4G, as the encoding option. But Release 16, expected by year's end, will include the findings of a study group assigned to explore alternatives. Wireless standards are frequently updated, and in the next 5G release, the industry could address concerns that OFDM may draw too much power in 5G devices and base stations.

That's a problem, because 5G is expected to require far more base stations to deliver service and connect billions of mobile and IoT devices. "I don't think the carriers really understood the impact on the mobile phone, and what it's going to do to battery life," says James Kimery, the director of marketing for RF and software-defined radio research at National Instruments Corp. "5G is going to come with a price, and that price is battery consumption." And Kimery notes that these concerns apply beyond 5G handsets. China Mobile has "been vocal about the power consumption of their base stations," he says. A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area.

Samsung said it has made the necessary improvements to fix the Galaxy Fold and put it back on sale. The April launch of the device was postponed after early reviewers reported broken screens; it's now scheduled to go on sale in September. From a report: "Samsung has taken the time to fully evaluate the product design, make necessary improvements and run rigorous tests," the company said in a statement. Improvements include extending a protective layer to make it clear it is not meant to be removed, as well as strengthening the hinge area with new protection caps. One explanation for the broken screens appears to have been that some reviewers removed a film which they thought was a typical protective layer that came with the phone when first bought.

CNBC reports on the latest revelations from America's Federal Trade Commission about the tactics used by the robocall industry: In some cases, robocalls proliferate through programs that resemble multilevel marketing schemes, where business founders push robocall packages on "members" to spur quick growth. In one case, an organization known alternately as "8 Figure Dream Lifestyle," "Millionaire Mind" and "Online Entrepreneur Academy" enticed consumers to buy memberships to gain access to a "franchise-like opportunity" to sell the organization's "proven business model" or "blueprint for success" downstream. Members paid between $2,395 and $22,495 to join, and the business claimed they could earn $5,000 to $10,000 in the first two weeks, followed by similarly large sums...

The FTC also looked at an organization called Life Management Services, which allegedly netted $15.6 million from consumers who thought they were reorganizing their credit card debt through an interest rate reduction service... Another complaint, against a corporation called First Choice Horizon, outlines how the robocaller "under the guise of confirming consumers' identities" for an offer of "bogus credit card interest rate reduction services," further "tricked them into providing their personal financial information, including their social security and credit card numbers," according to the FTC... Another organization, called Media Mix 365, which generated "leads" for home solar energy companies, called a single number 1,000 times in a year and placed millions of nuisance calls to others, the FTC says... A company called Lifewatch was a prolific spoofer, the FTC said, sending calls to consumers' phones that looked like they may have been coming from familiar numbers or numbers within the same area code. The group sold a "free" medical alert system and fraudulently claimed the system was endorsed by the American Heart Association or AARP. On the calls, people were told that they wouldn't be charged for the product unless it was "activated," but their credit cards were charged immediately, the FTC said...

For consumers wondering what they can do about the calls, the first rule is always, "hang up, do not engage. If you see an unknown caller ID, don't answer." Consumers can report robocalls or violations of the Do Not Call registry to the FTC on its website.

On Monday, 7-Eleven launched a smartphone payment service for its 20,000 stores in Japan. By Thursday $510,000 had been stolen from the people using it -- as many as 900 customers.

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen shared this follow-up article, which points out that it's also possible that email addresses and birth dates have been accessed from among the new app's 1.5 million registered users: Tsuyoshi Kobayashi, president of Seven Pay Co., told a press conference in Tokyo that the company will compensate users for the losses caused by fraudulent access and that it has already suspended accepting new users or allowing users of the service to add money to its smartphone application. The estimated amount of losses the company announced is as of 6 a.m. Thursday and the damage could expand...

The parent company said someone, who had accessed their accounts and used the registered numbers of their credit or debit cards, purchased items at its convenience stores. The items included packs of cigarettes, which can be easily converted into cash, it said, adding there was a case in which a huge quantity worth 100,000 yen [$921] was purchased all at once at one of its outlets...

According to Seven & i Holdings, some customers reported their losses on Tuesday and unauthorized access from China and other locations outside Japan was confirmed... Police arrested two Chinese men on Thursday in connection with the problem, investigative sources said. They are suspected of illegally using the ID and password of a customer Wednesday in an attempt to buy electric cigarette cartridges worth around 200,000 yen [$1,843] at a 7-Eleven shop in Tokyo.
Nikkei Asian Review reports that one of the suspects "received instructions about gaining unauthorized access to 7pay accounts via WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app. The Metropolitan Police Department suspects the involvement of an international criminal organization." (Japan Times reports that one man was asked to do "some shopping" after which they would receive "a reward".)

Nikkei Asian Review also notes that the Japanese government has been pushing to to have a least 40% of all payments be cashless by the mid-2020s -- including generous government tax incentives -- which one consumer finance writer says has "overheated" the market, while "the quality of services has declined in some cases."

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from Engadget: Samsung hasn't commented much on its decision to delay the Galaxy Fold and address design flaws, but it's opening up a little today. The company's electronics division CEO, DJ Koh, told those at a media event that he "pushed [the phone] through before it was ready." The setback was "embarrassing," he added. While Koh didn't elaborate on what happened, the statement suggests that Samsung was in a hurry to get the Fold out the door and claim some bragging rights. The Fold was supposed to arrive in late April, but early reviewers quickly discovered problems, including a display cover that was too easy to peel off and gaps that allowed debris to get behind the foldable screen. It was all too easy to break the sensitive panel -- and that would have been a problem with any phone, let alone one costing $1,980. Koh noted that Samsung had over 2,000 devices in the field and "defined all the issues," but didn't give an answer as to when the Fold might go back on sale.

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Google appears to have misused its dominant position in India and reduced the ability of device manufacturers to opt for alternate versions of its Android mobile operating system, Indian officials found before ordering a wider probe in an antitrust case. A 14-page order from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), reviewed by Reuters this week, found Google's restrictions on manufacturers seemed to amount to imposition of "unfair conditions" under India's competition law....

The Indian case is similar to one Google faced in Europe, where regulators imposed a $5 billion fine on the company for forcing manufacturers to pre-install its apps on Android devices. Google has appealed against the verdict.

By making pre-installation of Google's proprietary apps conditional, Google "reduced the ability and incentive of device manufacturers to develop and sell devices operated on alternate versions of Android", the CCI said in the order. "It amounts to prima facie leveraging of Google's dominance".

Nokia's CTO Marcus Weldon "told the BBC that the UK should be wary of using the Chinese hardware" -- though Nokia rushed to assure the BBC that Weldon's remarks do "not reflect the official position of Nokia."

Forbes reports: On the security front, Weldon referred to analysis suggesting Huawei equipment was far more likely to have vulnerabilities than technology from Nokia or Ericsson. "We read those reports and we think okay, we're doing a much better job than they are," Weldon said, describing Huawei's failings as serious and claiming Nokia's alternatives to be a safer bet. "Some of it seems to be just sloppiness, honestly, that they haven't patched things, they haven't upgraded. But some of it is real obfuscation, where they make it look like they have the secure version when they don't...."

The comments from Nokia's CTO came in light of research from Finite State, which published a scathing report claiming that "Huawei devices quantitatively pose a high risk to their users. In virtually all categories we examined, Huawei devices were found to be less secure than those from other vendors making similar devices." And this included the potential backdoors that lie at the heart of the U.S. government's security case against the Chinese company. "Out of all the firmware images analyzed, 55% had at least one potential backdoor," Finite State found. "These backdoor access vulnerabilities allow an attacker with knowledge of the firmware and/or with a corresponding cryptographic key to log into the device."
Nokia's later statement insisted that their company "is focused on the integrity of its own products and services and does not have its own assessment of any potential vulnerabilities associated with its competitors."

Pursuing a renewable energy strategy, Arizona's largest electric company "installed massive batteries near neighborhoods with a large number of solar panels, hoping to capture some of the energy from the afternoon sun to use after dark," reports the Associated Press.

Slashdot reader pgmrdlm shares their report on what happened next: But an April fire and explosion at a massive battery west of Phoenix that sent eight firefighters and a police officer to the hospital highlighted the challenges and risks that can arise as utilities prepare for the exponential growth of the technology. With an investigation ongoing and no public word on the fire's cause, the incident is being closely watched by energy storage researchers and advocates... "Absent battery storage, the whole value proposition of intermittent renewable energy makes no sense at all," said Donald Sadoway, a battery researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of battery storage company Ambri...

Nearly all of the utility-scale batteries now on the grid or in development are massive versions of the same lithium ion technology that powers cellphones and laptops... Arizona Public Service (APS) has assembled a team of engineers, safety experts and first responders to work with the utility, battery-maker Fluence and others to carefully remove and inspect the 378 modules that comprise the McMicken battery system and figure out what happened....

The APS fire was the third involving a utility-scale battery. One was at an APS-owned battery in Flagstaff in 2012, and the other was in Hawaii. APS has shut down its two similar batteries while awaiting the investigation's results, but the utility is not slowing down its plans to deploy new massive batteries, said Alan Bunnell, a company spokesman. "We believe energy storage is vital to a clean energy future here in Arizona," Bunnell said.

hackingbear tipped us off to a breaking news story.

CNN reports: US President Donald Trump has appeared to soften his tone on Chinese communications giant Huawei, suggesting that he would allow the company to once again purchase U.S. technology. Speaking at a press conference in Osaka, Saturday, Trump said that the U.S. sells a "tremendous amount of product" to Huawei. "That's okay, we will keep selling that product," said Trump. "The (U.S.) companies were not exactly happy that they couldn't sell."
Forbes points out "While it's not a lifting of the blanket ban, it will significantly benefit the Chinese manufacturer."

ZDNet reports: This news just broke with comments made by Trump, including "U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We're talking about equipment where there's no great national security problem with it." The details of this statement are still pending, but it is likely that 5G infrastructure equipment may still not be part of this access deal while the smartphone segment may be where we see open access.
One Daily Beast contributor argues the action "appears to be a surrender to publicly issued Chinese demands."

But TechCrunch writes that "any mutual trust has been broken and things are unlikely to be the same again."

The FCC has granted Verizon a partial waiver to start SIM locking new handsets to its network for 60 days. "This news out of the FCC is the response to Verizon requesting back in February that it be allowed to lock devices to help deter fraud and theft," reports Droid Life. From the report: Why did they need to ask the FCC about locking? As we have explained a couple of times now, Verizon agreed to specific usage terms when it licensed 700MHz C Block spectrum for its LTE network years ago. One of the individual terms concerned handset locking, where Verizon had to acknowledge that it would leave its phones open for use on other networks at all times. Unlike AT&T or T-Mobile phones, where you have to fulfill a number of criteria in order to get either to unlock a phone for use elsewhere, Verizon's phones were to remain unlocked.

The FCC's partial waiver permits Verizon to lock a customer's handset for 60 days from the date someone activates it on Verizon's network. Once the 60 days are up, this is what should happen: "After the expiration of the 60-day period, Verizon must automatically unlock the handsets at issue here regardless of whether: (1) the customer asks for the handset to be unlocked, or (2) the handset is fully paid off. Thus, at the end of the initial 60 days, the unlocking rule will operate just as it does now, and Verizon's customers will be able to use their unlocked handsets on other technologically compatible networks." The only exception is for fraud. "Verizon will not have to automatically unlock handsets that it determines within the 60-day period to have been purchased through fraud," the FCC says. Verizon has since issued a statement thanking the FCC and confirming that this new 60-day lock policy will go live "very soon."

New submitter AntiBrainWasher writes: Running away from the fear of legal/political persecution, the New York City-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) told editors of its roughly 200 journals yesterday that it feared "severe legal implications" from continuing to use Huawei scientists as reviewers in vetting technical papers. They can continue to serve on IEEE editorial boards, according to the memo, but "cannot handle any papers" until the sanctions are lifted. The IEEE ban has sparked outrage among Chinese scientists on social media. "I joined IEEE as a Ph.D. student because it is recognized as an International academic platform in electronics engineering," wrote Haixia (Alice) Zhang of Peking University in Beijing in a letter to IEEE leadership. "But this message is challenging my professional integrity. I have decided to quit the editorial boards [of two IEEE journals] until it restores our common professional integrity."

Meanwhile, the SD and Wi-Fi Alliance reinstated Huawei as a member, less than a week after they quietly removed the company from its membership list. Despite the lack of evidences, U.S. officials have alleged that the Chinese government could use equipment manufactured by Huawei, which is a global supplier of cellphones and wireless data networks, to spy on users or disrupt critical infrastructure, similar to what the NSA has done.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a private school where tuition is high, students can bicker about clothes, shoe brands, cellphones, or video games. At Paul Towler's middle school, where he teaches English to seventh and eighth graders, some kids "have enough money to be comfortable and others' parents are owners of giant nationwide restaurant chains," he says. Towler is used to seeing such disparities play out in the real world through objects that you can physically hold. But after battle royale sensation Fortnite exploded, the fights between students took an unexpected turn. Fortnite's virtual clothes became a status symbol, and some of Towler's pupils started policing what their classmates wore in-game.

The confrontations could get ugly. One student in Towler's class "begged his parents for [money] to buy a skin because no one would play with him" because he wore basic virtual clothes. While the bullying wasn't always Fortnite-specific, Towler recalls that it seemed "vicious for [the student] to have another avenue for the meaner kids to attack him." Things got better for that kid, but when your social scene begins and ends with Fortnite, having nobody to play with is like a mark of death.