EU to adopt unified policy on coronavirus mobile apps

ITNews

The European Union is drawing up common rules for using mobile apps to track the spread of the coronavirus, aiming to make better use of the technology and address privacy concerns.

The coordinated strategy comes after several EU countries have rolled out a variety of apps, triggering criticism from some data privacy activists who worry mass data collection could become permanent if not tightly controlled.

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Consumers Spending More On Mobile Apps Due To COVID-19

Android Headlines

Mobile attribution and marketing analytics company, AppsFlyer, has released a rather interesting report. A report that shows that consumers are spending more on apps lately, mainly due to COVID-19. AppsFlyer has noticed a rather obvious consumer spend revenue increase over the past two weeks, on a global scale. In 40-percent of cases, the increase in revenue was above 20-percent.

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Facebook and Samsung donate thousands of devices to NHS

BBC

Mobile giant Samsung is donating 2,000 smartphones to the NHS, for staff to use in Nightingale hospitals.

It will provide Galaxy XCover 4s phones, which are designed to be more robust and can be used while wearing gloves. Samsung said NHS England had already ordered an extra 20,000 phones and tablets, which it had agreed to supply at cost price, without taking a profit.

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Twitter notifies users that it’s now sharing more data with advertisers

The Verge

Twitter has removed a privacy feature that allowed all users to stop sharing some private information with advertisers. The setting prevented Twitter from sharing information like the ads you saw or interacted with and the tracking identifier for your phone. For most users, that information will now be shared by default and can’t be turned off.

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Google cracks down on ads relating to coronavirus-5G conspiracy theories

Prolific London

Google is banning misleading advertising that links 5G mobile technology to the coronavirus outbreak.

To do so, the company has banned search ads for search terms and keywords that carry the false connection.

Google is also banning all videos covering a so-called connection between COVID-19 and 5G technology.

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Telenor, Ericsson and Sony team up on IoT healthcare and logistics

Mobile Europe

The three are collaborating to deliver real-time IoT location and tracking solutions for sectors such as healthcare and logistics.

The initiative will use Telenor Connexion’s network, Ericsson’s IoT Accelerator platform and Sony Network Communications Europe’s smart IoT services.

Mats Lundquist, CEO of Telenor Connexion, said, ” We are proud to be a long-term partner of forward-thinking companies like Sony Network Communications Europe and to support their business growth and future IoT products and services.”

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China operators make major RCS commitment

Mobile World Live

China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom today (8 April) released a 5G messaging white paper outlining their commitment to mandate all compatible handsets sold in the country support Rich Communication Services (RCS).

The move to adopt the GSMA’s Universal Profile specification is backed by more than 12 major hardware vendors including Huawei; Xiaomi; Vivo; Oppo; ZTE; Lenovo; and Samsung.

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Rakuten Mobile launches its greenfield network in Japan

Fierce Wireless

Rakuten Mobile began building its greenfield wireless network in Japan in mid-2018, and today it announced the full-scale commercial launch of its 4G mobile service.  For a few weeks, the company has been offering a pre-launch unlimited plan for about $28 per month. This includes unlimited data within its own network areas as well as roaming on partner networks with partner roaming data capped at 2GB per month. But today, Rakuten Mobile increased the partner roaming data cap to 5GB per month in light of the coronavirus crisis.

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Proposed SMS OTP Enhancement Gains Traction

Mobile ID World

A proposal from Apple engineers aimed at making SMS security more effective is making its way through the web development community.

The idea, which was backed by Google in January, is essentially to link an SMS-based One Time Passcode directly to the website or other online entity sending it for user authentication. This means that an end user would receive the code via SMS, and then click the message to be taken to the issuing site so that the code can be entered.

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