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We take a weekly look at mobile and tech stories from around the world. Headlines include… Nothing Chats has already been pulled from Google Play over privacy issues,  Apple Announces Surprise New iPhone Move, Starting 2024, Leverage the Holiday Shopping Season: A Strategy Guide for mobile marketers and more…

Nothing Chats has already been pulled from Google Play over privacy issues

The Verge

Nothing has pulled the Nothing Chats beta from the Google Play store, saying it is “delaying the launch until further notice” while it fixes “several bugs.” The app promised to let Nothing Phone 2 users text with iMessage, but it required allowing Sunbird, who provides the platform, log into users’ iCloud accounts on its own Mac Mini servers, which… isn’t great?

The removal came after users widely shared a blog from Texts.com showing that messages sent with Sunbird’s system aren’t actually end-to-end encrypted — and that it’s not hard to compromise it. The app launched in beta yesterday after being announced earlier this week.

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Apple Announces Surprise New iPhone Move, Starting 2024

Forbes

Apple has announced it will adopt the rich communication services messaging standard for all iPhones in a surprise move. The iPhone maker says RCS will arrive at some point in 2024 as part of a software update, indicating it could be here within months.

It comes after years of Apple refusing to bow to pressure to adopt the messaging standard, which allows iPhone users to message Android users seamlessly and is far more secure than SMS.

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Leverage the Holiday Shopping Season: A Strategy Guide for mobile marketers

Mobile Marketing Magazine

The holiday season, filled with festivals and shopping bonanzas, provides an unmissable opportunity for marketers to amplify their brand presence and boost sales. With the proliferation of mobile usage, marketers are increasingly leaning towards mobile platforms to launch their campaigns and promotions. This article sheds light on how mobile marketers can harness the potential of the holiday shopping season by engaging with customers during major events and holidays such as Singles Day Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and Christmas.

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Biometrics May Be Online Retail’s Ticket to More Sales

PYMNTS

Retailers are leveraging innovative solutions, such as biometrics, to enhance convenience, security and personalized services in their day-to-day business.

Biometrics systems are gaining popularity as an authentication method for more and more digital tasks, including retail purchases. Retailers can offer customers a seamless shopping experience by using facial recognition or fingerprints. In a context of economic uncertainty and high promotional intensity, such as the upcoming holiday season, this can be a differentiating factor.

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83% of mobile games fail in three years after launch, report states

Eurogamer

According to a new report, 83 percent of games released on mobile platforms fail within three years of launch. In addition, 43 percent of mobile games are cancelled during development.

The report, conducted by Atomik Research for SuperScale’s Good Games Don’t Die and shared by Eurogamer’s sister site GamesIndustry.biz, was based on interviews with 500 game developers, from both here in the UK and across the pond in the US.

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Online shoppers need stronger authentication to fight fraud this Christmas: Prove survey

Biometric update

Christmas is coming and so is the increased likelihood of online shopping scams. A new survey from digital identity company Prove shows that 81 percent of consumers are worried about being defrauded while shopping online this holiday season.

The survey was conducted for Prove by market research company Dynata over 1,000 U.S. consumers. Its findings show that the biggest Christmas boogeyman may be artificial intelligence-based frauds: A vast majority (84 percent) said that they were concerned about fraud such as social engineering schemes, password hacking, deepfakes and voice cloning. The way to reduce password hacking is through multi-factor authentication. Other attack methods can be prevented with digital identity verification, Prove says.

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MEF