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Andrew Orr

Since 2015 Andrew has been writing about Apple, privacy, security, and at one point even Android. You can find him most places online under the username @andrewornot.

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Articles by Andrew Orr

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Catholic Publication Used Location Data Against a Priest

Andrew Orr ·

Catholic media publication The Pillar used location data from gay dating app Grindr to track the movements of a priest, then publicly outed him for “improper behavior.”

It wasn’t clear who had collected the information about Burrill. USCCB spokespeople declined to answer questions Tuesday about what it knew about the information-gathering and what its leadership feels about it, except to say the USCCB wasn’t involved. They also declined to comment on whether they knew if Burrill’s alleged actions were tracked on a private or church-owned phone.

This is a good example of how our data can be used against us, and not just by advertisers.

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Akamai DNS Outage Took Out Airbnb, LastPass, Steam, UPS, FedEx, Others

Andrew Orr ·

Akamai’s Edge DNS service experienced an issue at around 11AM ET with dozens of websites and apps getting knocked offline. At the time of this writing the outage has been resolved.

Akamai said it was “actively investigating the issue,” but when reached a spokesperson would not say if its outage was the cause of the disruption to other sites and services that are currently offline. Akamai would not say what caused the issue but that it was already in recovery.

An iPhone 7 Photo Won the 2021 iPhone Photography Awards
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An iPhone 7 Photo Won the 2021 iPhone Photography Awards

Andrew Orr ·

The winners of the 2021 iPhone Photography Awards have been announced, and the grand prize winner is Istvan Kerekes from Hungary whose photo was of two Transylvanian shepherds (pictured above) shot using an iPhone 7. In first place is Sharon Shetty of India with a photo of a man and horse using an iPhone X. In second place, Dan Liu from China submitted a beautiful landscape using an iPhone 11 Pro Max. Finally, the third place photo is from Jeff Rayner in the United States, with a photo of a little girl on an iPhone X.

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FCC Increases Enforcement Efforts Against Right to Repair Violations

Andrew Orr ·

On Wednesday the FCC voted to increase law enforcement efforts against violations of Right to Repair laws.

The policy statement adopted today is aimed at manufacturers’ practices that make it extremely difficult for purchasers to repair their products or shop around for other service providers to do it for them. By enforcing against restrictions that violate antitrust or consumer protection laws, the Commission is taking important steps to restore the right to repair.

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UK Man Joseph O’Connor Arrested for Hacking Apple’s Twitter Account

Andrew Orr ·

Joseph O’Connor, also known as “PlugWalkJoe” has been arrested for hacking Apple’s Twitter account in 2020. He also faces charges for “takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat user accounts.”

O’Connor openly identified himself as “PlugWalkJoe” and confirmed that the hackers had obtained Twitter credentials to take over the accounts via an internal company Slack. At the time, O’Connor was fairly bullish about his involvement and apparent safety, “They can come arrest me. I would laugh at them. I haven’t done anything,” he told the Times.

He had also compromised the Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, former President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, President Joe Biden, and a few others.

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Audio App ‘Clubhouse’ Exits Beta With Over 10 Million Users

Andrew Orr ·

Clubhouse, the invite-only social audio platform, has exited beta on Wednesday. The new release is out today on iOS and Android and updates with appear every 1-2 weeks.

This means we have removed our waitlist system so that anyone can join. If you have a club, you can post your link far and wide. If you are a creator with an audience, you can bring them all on. If you’re hosting a public event, anyone can attend. You can bring close friends, classmates, family members, coworkers, and anyone else you like.

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Tumblr Debuts ‘Post+’ Plan for Creators to Make Money

Andrew Orr ·

Tumblr has launched a subscription plan in beta called Post+. It’s a way to help creators make money by letting them charge for blogging access.

As a creator you’ll set up an account for payments in a quick and easy process. You’ll then be able to make a +Post (a post with a paywall), only viewable to you and your supporters. You’ll also be able to offer supporter-exclusive perks.

As a supporter, you’ll back the creators you love with a monthly subscription, giving you access to exclusive content and perks.

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A Glimpse Into the World of Mobile Advertising IDs and Their Use

Andrew Orr ·

Motherboard gives us a brief look into mobile advertising IDs (MAIDS) and how they can be used to unmask your identity.

All BIGDBM USA data assets are connected to each other,” Mack added, explaining that MAIDs are linked to full name, physical address, and their phone, email address, and IP address if available. The dataset also includes other information.

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Worried if You Were Infected by Pegasus? This Tool Can Help

Andrew Orr ·

This week, a strain of malware known as Pegasus from NSO Group has been making headlines. It’s used by governments to target journalists, activists, and other people deemed dissidents. But there is a tool that could detect it.

MVT will let you take an entire iPhone backup (or a full system dump if you jailbreak your phone) and feed in for any indicators of compromise (IOCs) known to be used by NSO to deliver Pegasus, such as domain names used in NSO’s infrastructure that might be sent by text message or email.

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Instagram Launches Control for Viewing Sensitive Content

Andrew Orr ·

Instagram has launched a Sensitive Content Control feature for content that appears in the Explore tab.

This new feature gives you control over sensitive content. You can decide to leave things as they are or you can adjust the Sensitive Content Control to see more or less of some types of sensitive content. We recognize that everybody has different preferences for what they want to see in Explore, and this control will give people more choice over what they see.

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Hackers Leak ‘Humana’ Data of Over 6,000 Patients

Andrew Orr ·

An SQL database containing what appears to be highly sensitive health insurance data of more than 6,000 patients has been leaked on a hacker forum.

The author of the post claims that the data was acquired from US insurance giant Humana and includes detailed medical records of the company’s health plan members dating back to 2019. The leaked information includes patients’ names, IDs, email addresses, password hashes, Medicare Advantage Plan listings, medical treatment data, and more.

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DuckDuckGo Launches Free Email Protection Service

Andrew Orr ·

Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo has launched an Email Protection Service to protect against email trackers. You can get a free, personalized @duck.com address that will forward emails to your regular inbox.

We remove hidden trackers from incoming emails sent to this address, then forward them to your regular inbox for safer reading. This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.