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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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ProtonMail Users Get Free Storage, ProtonVPN Gets More Servers

Andrew Orr ·

Proton is giving users additional storage for ProtonMail at no extra cost, and added 53 additional ProtonVPN servers in 17 countries.

In these turbulent times, we’re reminded of the importance of community and solidarity. With this in mind, we wanted to do our part to help support both the Proton community and others around the world who need support to confront this crisis.

It’s great to see Proton do this. Since it mentions the experimental ProtonDrive product coming in the future, it sounds like this extra storage is permanent.

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Twitter Took Away Your Ability to Stop Sharing Data With Advertisers

Andrew Orr ·

Twitter had a feature that users could enable that stopped the company from sharing certain data with advertisers. That feature is now gone.

An option in Twitter’s privacy settings called “Share your data with Twitter’s business partners” used to let you disable sharing of this information. That setting still exists, but Twitter now says it has removed your control over “mobile app advertising measurements.” Disabling the setting can still prevent sharing of other information, such as your interests. Other Twitter privacy settings, like disabling web tracking, are still available. Twitter will not share your name, email address, phone number, or username.

Apple’s Clips App Updated to Support Mice, Trackpads
Cool Stuff Found

Apple’s Clips App Updated to Support Mice, Trackpads

Andrew Orr ·

Apple updated Clips, its creative tool used to send quick, fun videos over social media. Version 2.1.1 appeared yesterday with the following features:Use Clips on iPad with a mouse, trackpad, or Bluetooth keyboard for new ways to create videos (requires iPadOS 13.4); Use the Duplicate button to instantly create a copy of a clip with all its effects; Tap the Split button to divide any clip in two; Make stickers pop on and off the screen—just split any clip and apply stickers to either of the two new sections; Give your video the look of an 80’s arcade game with updated 8-bit stickers and the new Game Over poster; Celebrate spring with the floral Springtime poster; Choose from 11 new Mickey and Minnie Mouse stickers, each with its own expressive animation; Performance and stability improvements. 

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Will Apple Kill Beats? Probably Not This Year

Andrew Orr ·

As shared by The Loop, there is some speculation on whether Apple will end the Beats brand. iMore says Apple should kill it, while 9to5Mac claims to have learned there is no plan to kill it. It started because of a separate rumor that Apple will release over-the-ear headphones under the AirPods brand. Quote from the iMore piece:

If Apple is truly planning to release over-the-ear noise-canceling pair of headphones similar to the Bose 700 has Jon Prosser suggests, it would be incredibly redundant to continue to release Beats as well. The Apple brand is just more valuable to Apple than the Beats brand — plain and simple.

My two cents is that Apple will probably phase out Beats, but not this year. It will be a gradual process over the next 10 years, like how the iPod touch still gets an occasional refresh but otherwise isn’t mentioned. You can’t kill a brand like Beats overnight. Once over-the-ear AirPods come out, and they will, phase one will be complete. There will be an AirPod for each Beats category, because you can’t leave customers hanging without alternatives, thank you very much.

Cool Stuff Found

‘iPad Main Menu’ Concept Reimagines App Settings

Andrew Orr ·

Alexander Käßner uploaded a concept video called iPad Main Menu. On Reddit he says it’s the result of a bachelor thesis. It introduces app menus that are accessible with an always-present icon on the dock, and/or a three-finger tap. It’s similar to the right-click menu we see on macOS. I love it because it gives you quick access to all app settings, which end up in different locations depending on the whim of the developer (hamburger menus notwithstanding). Main Menu is consistent.

The main menu is split into two columns. We find the most common actions on the left, such as cut/copy/paste, and app-specific features are on the right. Main Menu also works with a keyboard, so you “never lift a finger again.”

Update: Mr. Käßner also has a website for the concept here.

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Russia Implicated in BGP Hijacking Incident This Week

Andrew Orr ·

Russian telecom company Rostelecom is implicated in a BGP hijacking incident which rerouted network traffic from Akamai, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and others.

BGP stands for the Border Gateway Protocol and is the de-facto system used to route internet traffic between internet networks across the globe…

BGPMon founder Andree Toonk is giving the Russian telco the benefit of the doubt. On Twitter, Toont said he believes the “hijack” happened after an internal Rostelecom traffic shaping system might have accidentally exposed the incorrect BGP routes on the public internet, rather than Rostelecom’s internal network…

But, as many internet experts have also pointed out in the past, it is possible to make an intentional BGP hijack appear as an accident, and nobody could tell the difference.

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Facebook Tried to Buy a Hacking Tool to Spy on iPhone Users

Andrew Orr ·

According to court filings, when Facebook was in the early stages of building its spyware VPN called Onavo Protect, it noticed that it wasn’t as effective on Apple devices as it was on Android. So Facebook approached a hacking group called NSO Group to use its Pegasus malware.

According to the court documents, it seems the Facebook representatives were not interested in buying parts of Pegasus as a hacking tool to remotely break into phones, but more as a way to more effectively monitor phones of users who had already installed Onavo.

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Zoom’s Encryption is Linked to Chinese Servers

Andrew Orr ·

Researchers found that Zoom uses its own encryption scheme, sometimes using keys issued by China.

Some of the key management systems — 5 out of 73, in a Citizen Lab scan — seem to be located in China, with the rest in the United States. Interestingly, the Chinese servers are at least sometimes used for Zoom chats that have no nexus in China. The two Citizen Lab researchers, Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton, live in the United States and Canada. During a test call between the two, the shared meeting encryption key “was sent to one of the participants over TLS from a Zoom server apparently located in Beijing,” according to the report.

I don’t have further commentary on Zoom, other than asking, “How will this end?”