Andrew Orr

John Hancock insurance will make it mandatory to have an activity tracker, whether it be an iPhone, Apple Watch, or some other device.

The move by the 156-year-old insurer, owned by Canada’s Manulife, marks a major shift for the company, which unveiled its first interactive life insurance policy in 2015. It is now applying the model across all of its life coverage.

In the past it relied on a reward system for people who had an activity tracker, like gift cards.

A recent Newegg breach lasted a whole month, and hackers stole customer credit card information.

Hackers injected 15 lines of card skimming code on the online retailer’s payments page which remained for more than a month between August 14 and September 18, Yonathan Klijnsma, a threat researcher at RiskIQ, told TechCrunch. The code siphoned off credit card data from unsuspecting customers to a server controlled by the hackers with a similar domain name — likely to avoid detection. The server even used an HTTPS certificate to blend in.

For the past couple of years I’ve used a service called Privacy.com. It connects to my bank account and I can create near-unlimited virtual cards to use with various places. And no this isn’t an ad, I just think it’s a great service. It’s basically a password manager for your money.

Turn off notifications. Just do it. They create unnecessary stress and some apps use notifications to whine that you’re not using it 24/7. Especially Facebook.

As our attention is increasingly fragmented and split among dozens of apps, the apps have compensated by getting more demanding of your time. Notifications are no longer used to notify you of anything—they’re used by apps to scream over each other in hopes that you’ll click them.

Our phones don’t control us. In fact it’s the other way around.

Apple updated its iTunes Store terms and privacy disclosures. Included is how the company computes a device trust score to prevent fraud.

To help identify and prevent fraud, information about how you use your device, including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and receive, will be used to compute a device trust score when you attempt a purchase. The submissions are designed so Apple cannot learn the real values on your device. The scores are stored for a fixed time on our servers.

They aren’t full records, rather “abstracted.” It’s not like Apple is going to abuse this information, but at first glance it does seem a bit unusual. Especially for devices like Apple TVs that don’t have email or phone capabilities.

Wired has another good article today, written by Edward Snowden. He writes how government surveillance isn’t new.

Born to a mother who was a member of the Black Panther Party and raised in Brooklyn in an environment of political ferment and police scrutiny, Malkia was fighting against the surveillance of activists and people of color before anyone knew my name.

Us white people might not be so used to surveillance, but Mr. Snowden reminds us how African Americans and Muslim Americans have long been targeted by the government.

If we don’t want to become the United State, we have to figure out how to stop smart cities from becoming surveillance cities.

Since the growth of “surveillance cities” is no longer a hypothetical, we should all be ready to do what it takes to create responsible safeguards and prevent the unnecessary risks and harms this technology can create. Both elected officials and the public should be provided notice of the potential deployment of these technologies, the potential privacy and civil liberties risks they present, and the real impact of their use.

An interesting piece from the ACLU discusses how smart cities can become tools of surveillance. We have a modern example of this in Xinjiang, China.

Warning: in a society that values the beautiful people, if you rely on making money based solely on your good looks, like Instagram models, you’ll some day become irrelevant as you turn old and wrinkled, especially if you have no other life skills.

But, for a growing number of users – and mental health experts – the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful. If Facebook demonstrates that everyone is boring and Twitter proves that everyone is awful, Instagram makes you worry that everyone is perfect – except you.

Salesforce billionaires Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne have purchased Time magazine from Meredith Corp. for US$190 million.

We are honored to be the caretakers of one of the world’s most important media companies and iconic brands. Time has always been a trusted reflection of the state of the world, and reminds us that business is one of the greatest platforms for change.

This is a personal purchase and not a Salesforce acquisition. Besides Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated are also being sold, because “they have different audiences and advertisers than most of its other magazines.”

An emergency physician took to Reddit to explain the Apple Watch ECG and what the FDA approval actually means.

In summary, the new Apple Watch looks like a great tool, but it is not meant to be a medical grade device and not a substitute for medical and professional evaluation in the case of symptoms. Even if your Apple Watch ECG appears totally normal that does not necessarily mean you do not have atrial fibrillation or other cardiac abnormalities.

Basically, I was totally wrong when I wrote about the ECG function. Also, FDA-approved doesn’t mean the Apple Watch is a medical device. It’s in the Class II category which puts it on the same level as condoms and home pregnancy kits. The Verge has details as well.