News written by James Delahunty (July, 2018)

Google has banned apps from the Play Store that are used to mine cryptocurrencies.

Having previously banned Chrome extensions that mine cryptocurrency, Google has banned apps from the Play Store that mine cryptocurrency using devices they are installed on. "We don't allow apps that mine crypto-currency on devices," an updated developer policy reads.

Apps that manage mining on remote systems like cloud computing platforms will still be allowed on the Play Store, however.

Mining cryptocurrency is a process-intensive task that can max out computing hardware. On portable devices like smartphones, this can cause overheating and drain the battery very quickly.

Cryptocurrency mining has also been adopted by malware distributors, using computing resources of infected devices to carry out mining operations out of sight. This tends to have a debilitating effect on overall system performance.

Source: BBC News

There are now 83 million Spotify customers paying for premium service as the Swedish streaming firm holds its lead in face of competition.

Spotify had previously reported crossing 70 million paid subscribers globally in January. Having jumped now to over 83 million paid subscribers, Spotify is continuing its impressive growth even though it faces increasing competition in the streaming marketplace.

In April, Apple announced that its own Apple Music streaming service had crossed over 40 million paying subscribers. Some analysts have predicted that Apple will catch up to and surpass its Swedish rival, having reportedly passed Spotify's U.S.-based subscriber tally by July of this year. At the end of this year, Apple may have around 3 million more U.S. subscribers than Spotify.

A lot of eyes are on Spotify's revenue as the streaming giant filed to go public in January of this year. The service has yet to make a profit.

via: The Verge

According to the Washington Post, Twitter purged more than 70 million accounts from the service since May.

The purge is part of Twitter's effort to fight against bots operating on its network, and also against "trolls" who abuse the company's terms of service. According to the report, many of the suspicious and fake accounts are remotely controlled bots that present all kinds of problems and threats.

A Twitter spokesperson told the Post that the purge was nothing new and was part of work to improve the health of the public conservation on Twitter.

He added that Twitter also took action against 142,000 applications responsible for spammy tweets on the social network.

As services like Twitter and Facebook take action against fake accounts, those responsible for them tend to change their ways to avoid detection. As new technologies including conversational AI become more widespread, it will be a much more difficult task to determine if an account represents a real individual or not.

Apple has pushed the latest iOS update, including USB restrictions aimed at countering accessories that can crack passcodes.

Such USB accessories are sometimes used by law enforcement and others to allow for infinite guesses at a device's passcode, then cracking it by using brute force techniques. In order to counter this method, Apple said it would change settings in an update that disables USB accessories entirely after an hour without the phone being unlocked.

Previously, this time frame was set to a week. With the release of iOS 11.4.1, the USB restriction change is the default. However, you can also disable it. Under Touch ID, or Face ID, settings you will see a new option you can toggle on or off for "USB Accessories."

The description reads: "Unlock iPhone to allow USB accessories to connect when it has been more than an house since your iPhone was locked."

A second Erase Data option will erase all data on a device if ten attempts to guess the passcode result in failure.

Other things included in the iOS update are stability fixes and an improved Find My AirPod feature.

via: Engadget