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Find out the week’s top mobile stories from around the world.

This week… Mobile call time rose by half after start of Covid-19 lockdown, Apple pays $288,000 to white-hat hackers, mobile games thrive, even as pandemic keeps players home and much more…

Mobile call time rose by half after start of Covid-19 lockdown

BBC

People in the UK spent much longer chatting on the phone in the first weeks of lockdown, research suggests.
Time spent talking on mobiles “rose significantly” – by almost 50% – after the announcement of strict measures in March, media regulator Ofcom says. Average call time rose from three minutes 40 seconds to nearly five-and-a-half minutes.

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Apple pays $288,000 to white-hat hackers who had run of company’s network

Ars Technica

For months, Apple’s corporate network was at risk of hacks that could have stolen sensitive data from potentially millions of its customers and executed malicious code on their phones and computers, a security researcher said on Thursday.

Sam Curry, a 20-year-old researcher who specializes in website security, said that, in total, he and his team found 55 vulnerabilities. He rated 11 of them critical because they allowed him to take control of core Apple infrastructure and from there steal private emails, iCloud data, and other private information.

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Mobile games thrive, even as pandemic keeps players home

Techxplore

Mobile games are thriving as players turn to them for fun and friendship during the pandemic, with increasing numbers of women joining the trend.

“Being stuck at home has not stopped people from playing games on their phones,” said SensorTower mobile insights strategist Craig Chapple. “To the contrary, mobile gaming is more popular than ever.”

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Sophisticated new Android malware marks the latest evolution of mobile ransomware

Microsoft

Attackers are persistent and motivated to continuously evolve – and no platform is immune. That is why Microsoft has been working to extend its industry-leading endpoint protection capabilities beyond Windows. The addition of mobile threat defense into these capabilities means that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (previously Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection) now delivers protection on all major platforms.

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EU’s top court limits government spying on citizens’ mobile and internet data

CNBC

The top court in the European Union has delivered another blow to governments seeking to keep tabs on citizens through controversial spying techniques.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ), the EU’s highest legal authority, ruled Tuesday that member states cannot collect mass mobile and internet data on citizens.

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Mobile Banking’s Authentication Game-Changer

PYMNTS

The way we bank is changing in the age of COVID-19. And as Entersekt Senior Vice President of Product Christian Ali told PYMNTS in a recent interview, the means by which banks authenticate their suddenly digital users must change, too.

As Ali noted, expectations about what banking should be are changing as “all of a sudden, overnight, all users were thrust online.” That puts pressure on banks that, prior to the pandemic, may have anticipated, at best, “medium usage” of their online banking efforts, where other subsets of users (older consumers come to mind) might have chosen in-person branch visits to conduct transactions and other activities

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China charges forward into 5G wireless future, despite pandemic, weak economy

Marketplace

Chinese users will account for 7 out of every 10 5G connections in the world, according to the GSM Association, the mobile industry’s main trade association.

A lot of Americans have seen ads from wireless carriers proclaiming that the super-fast 5G network future has arrived, one with next-generation speed and data bandwidth allowing users to, say, download a movie in less than 10 seconds.

So here’s your reality check.

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12 Effective Mobile Marketing Tips

Forbes

Mobile marketing has opened up an entirely new way to target and engage customers. With the right mobile marketing tool, a business can tailor its content to any number of targeted audiences. If a company has a few demographics as its target audience, it can drill down to a granular level and target them independently.

However, not all businesses know how to make the best use of mobile marketing. Having this powerful tool, yet not knowing how to use it, can undermine a business’s potential. Below, 12 associates of Forbes Communications Council look at how companies can effectively utilize mobile marketing to engage their core demographics.

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Africa’s quiet cryptocurrency revolution

DW

frica is undergoing an economic revolution that has nothing to do with banks and despite little sign of outdated economic policies being overhauled.

Monthly cryptocurrency transfers to and from Africa under $10,000 (€8,500) shot up by 55% over the past year, reaching a peak of $316 million in June.

These numbers, which are based on data from US Blockchain research firm Chainalysis, are likely to keep rising. And while cryptocurrency is more commonly used by financial traders in other parts of the world, Africa is bucking this trend and mainly using it for commerce.

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