With over a million apps each on the Apple App Store and on Google Play, marketing one’s app must be tough business for any developer. With the multitude of copycat apps that essentially have similar functionalities, app developers will be lucky to have their offerings included in top and featured lists, whether in terms of downloads, ratings, reviews or revenues. How does one reach the tipping point, in which great traction — and organic revenue potential — will shortly come thereafter?

It seems developers are finding ways to game the system, in what can be considered shady practices or at least grey areas in building up the profile of one’s app. In a recent tweet, Hong Kong-based TapCase developer Simon Pang shares what appears to be a lady doing ratings and reviews on an array of tablets. Pang writes how “this is how App Store ratings work.”

This is how App Store ratings work. Welcome to the reality. pic.twitter.com/0MyHmTeqwE

— simonpang (@simonpang) February 2, 2015

Barry Mead of Fireproof Games tweets that “‘respected’ major developers use systems like these daily.”

This being Twitter, of course, there is no verification yet as to the original source of the image, and whether the photographed activity is, indeed, a pay-to-review or pay-to-rate service. However, it has shed some light into such practices that skew app store ratings, popularity, downloads and eventually revenues for these developers.

Wall Street Journal‘s Lisa Fleisher plans to dig deeper into the issue. But without prejudice to Fleisher’s journalistic work, we can already arrive at several questions and critiques with respect to how major app ecosystems are run.

Is it against policy? What is being done?

One might wonder whether Apple is aware of how developers are gaming its app discovery system. It’s reminiscent of how developers will jack up their app prices from $0.99 to $999 (the maximum that the App Store supports), and then having someone buy a copy of the app. Even as Apple gets a 30% share of the money, the app then gets a boost on the top paid apps list, after which the developer can revert the price back to $0.99. In essence, moneyed developers can shell out cash and then lose 30% of this value, but then get a potentially more popular (and revenue generating) application in return.

If pay-to-review farms are mass-producing ratings and reviews in exchange for pay, then it’s grossly unfair to developers who rely on organic reviews and ratings by actual users. Ratings affect discoverability and revenue potential. Developers can easily recoup their investment once they start getting millions of daily downloads.

Apple’s developer terms of service says this: “If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal data from users, copy another developer’s work, or manipulate the ratings) your Apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the developer program.”

Google Play also has this to say in its developer program policies: “Developers must not attempt to change the placement of any Product in the Store, or manipulate any product ratings or reviews by unauthorized means such as fraudulent installs, paid or fake reviews or ratings, or by offering incentives to rate products.”

But “tricking the review process” and “manipulating the ratings” are quite broad terminology. Does it specifically ban paying someone to do manual reviews? Or does it only ban bots? Does it have a geographic dimension? And what does Apple do to apps that employed such practices, but then gained legitimate and organic ratings, reviews and downloads later on?

At least Google’s terminology explicitly calls out paid and fake reviews and ratings. The question is whether the app store ecosystems are actually doing concrete steps in going after violators.

Gaming and economics

This reminds me of the way people have gamed the big systems before. To wit:

• In the heyday of pay-per-click advertising, clickfraud was a big deal. But it did not prevent publishers from hiring third parties to do manual clicking to jack up revenue — or sometimes even to kill off competitors’ campaigns or screw with their ad budgets.
• Content farms used to be a popular way to earn millions. These companies paid measly cents for writers to churn out rehashed, SEO-friendly, but questionable quality articles, and then earn from the ad placements. This was a viable business model until Google pulled the plug with various search algorithm updates that ended up hurting both content farms and valid publications.
• While trading virtual goods with real money may be against the policies of most games, it has not stopped companies from doing “gold farming” activities — something that has implications not only within the dynamics of MMORPGs, but also development economics, as well (e.g., buyers tend to be from developed countries, while players who play to sell items come from emerging economies).
• Today, viral sites have the habit of ripping off content from other sources (in which the originating source is rarely credited), adding clickbait headlines for the benefit of social sharing, and earning from advertisements. Facebook has recently attempted to curtail these practices through algorithm changes, but viral junk still remains in our newsfeeds.

The common denominator among these examples is money. Where there is potential money involved, then people will tend to find ways to game the system for their economic advantage. Never mind user experience, content quality or business ethics.

Given that “respected major developers” are said to be doing this, can we still trust app store ratings and discovery mechanisms?

Feature image credit: Bloomua / Shutterstock.com

The post Gaming the App Store: Modern Day Clickfraud? appeared first on VR World.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) said on Jan. 28 that Taiwan is one of the top five markets for its app store by revenue.

“It was not a surprise to see three Asian markets in the top-five list given the high smartphone penetration rates in these countries, which in turn leads to strong demand for mobile games,” said Chris Yerga, vice president of engineering and head of Google Play in Asia Pacific. “The top five Google Play markets are in Asia – Taiwan, Japan and South Korea – and the United States also was part of that group.”

Yerga, however, did not elaborate the fifth market or give the specific rankings of the top five, saying only that the figures were not for public consumption.

Google Play, originally the Android Market, is a digital distribution platform operated by Google. It also serves as the official app store for the Android system on mobile devices, that users are able to browse, download, and purchase specific applications developed with the Android SDK and published through Google.

Google Play has more than one million free and paying apps and over 50 billion downloads today, while it was launched as the official app store for Google’s Android operating system in 2012. Google Play offered music, games, magazines, books, movies and television programs. Google Play’s game services received 100 million new users between January and June last year, making it the fastest-growing mobile gaming network of all time.

A poll by the Institute for Information Industry which was released last December revealed that 13.55 million Taiwanese users aged over 12 had a smartphone during the last six months last year, representing 65.4% of Taiwan’s 12 and over population. That was up from a smartphone penetration rate of 58.7% during the first six months last year.

The post Taiwan is on Google Play’s Top-Five Market List appeared first on VR World.

For over 25 years ResMed has been providing medical equipment for sleep-disorder breathing. They are clearly not a johnny-come-lately, jumping on the latest hi-tech bandwagon. This fall ResMed introduced the S+, a no-contact sleep tracking device developed for the consumer.  This differs greatly from wearables such as the Basis Peak and the Jawbone UP systems that promise to track sleep as well as steps, calories, and activity.

The ResMed S+ uses a combination of respiratory and biomotion sensors that not only monitor your motion and breathing while you sleep, but the temperature, light and noise in your bedroom as well. In addition to the biomotion sensor device, ResMed S+ has a smartphone app for iOS or Android. The application connects to the ResMed proprietary cloud and your nightly data is compared to hundreds of thousands of recorded nights of sleep from their other medical prescription respiratory devices. The app makes suggestions for a better night’s sleep based on the data it collects.

Getting a good night’s sleep is something all of us need and want. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 60 percent of people report they have problems sleeping almost every night. Continual sleep problems can lead to next-day drowsiness and increases in health related issues like congestive heart failure, obesity, and diabetes. Many people suffer from sleep apnea which is when you stop breathing during the night. Such individuals, usually, wake up with a snort for air, which disrupts a good night’s sleep. As you might guess, sleep apnea can be fatal. Do you have sleep apnea? Take the quiz provided by ResMed.

Now that you understand the importance of the information provided by ResMed S+, let’s take a look at what you get in the ResMed box for $149.95.

The post ResMed S+: High Tech Help for Good Night’s Sleep appeared first on VR World.

Hiku scans, records, categorizes, locates, and marks your favorite items to make shopping a no-brainer. The handheld device scans bar codes on your favorite and incidental items. The item is then listed on a shopping list on your smartphone ready to take to the store.

You can assign an item to any number of user-named lists – Safeway, Petsmart, RiteAid, GNC, and so forth. Head for the store, display your shopping list on your phone and proceed down the aisles. In this review, I’ll show you with pictures how easy it was to install,  learn, and use. I’ll also tell you what I did and didn’t like about Hiku.

You’ll need either an iOS or Android smartphone to download the free Hiku app. I tested the Android version as soon as it was released. The beta packaging still only refers to the original iOS version though.

You can buy the related scanning device direct from Hiku. The same device works with both iOS 6.0+ and Android 4.0+ since it sends the scanned information to a neutral cloud. The device contains a 1D linear scanner, a microphone, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery.

Inside the box you’ll find the device, a micro USB cable for charging the battery, and a tiny three-fold 3”x3” Start Up Guide.

Hiku seems like an odd name for an application that creates a grocery list. When I questioned Matt Beebe, head of product and design, he explained: “The name Hiku comes from the Japanese short-form poetry, meant to be said in a single breath. When done well, a haiku communicates meaning in its simplest form, and is beautiful. That captures the ethos of our brand: to bring simplicity and beauty to people’s lives.”

The product’s instructions themselves are simplicity personified. They start by telling you to download the application from the Apple App Store < https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hiku-mobile/id721935991?ls=1&mt=8 > and follow the on-screen instructions to connect Hiku to your Wi-Fi. It needs to be a 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi network. Because I was beta testing the Android version, I went instead to Google Play  for a copy of the software. The product’s documentation obviously needs to be updated to include the new version. When you search for Hiku on either site be careful of what you choose.

A search for Hiku on iTunes and Google Play displays several misleading, but interesting, choices.

One choice might include the following Haiku poem by the 17^th century Japanese master Matsuo Basho: < http://poemhunter.com/matsuo-basho/ >

A field of cotton –
as if the moon
had flowered.

Take a moment to mentally contemplate the image … Now let’s continue with our study of a more mundane topic: grocery shopping.

INSTALLING HIKU

Installation of the Hiku app on an HTC was easy and automatic. You are asked for your Wi-Fi connection.

You are told when to sync your device to the application by placing the device on the phone’s display.

Make note of the warning that accompanies the placement. It is no B.S. The bright pulsating action that takes place during the synchronization is intense.

You’ll be rewarded with a message of success that displays on the phone below the device.

The process creates an icon on the phone’s home panel.

The Hiku icon appears here in the lower right corner of the phone’s display.

To sign onto Hiku, you’ll need yet another password to keep track of. They do have a way of assisting you if you forget it. After you have started a shopping list, you can share that list because it is stored in the cloud not on your phone. You could send your mate to the store and they could access the list by signing in to their own smartphone with the same email address and password you created during set up.

 USING HIKU

The device itself is made of a study, water resistant, shell designed to resist damage to both exterior and interior even when dropped. It is fitted with a magnet that attaches tightly to your refrigerator and is covered by a soft silicon rubber that keeps it from scratching the appliance. The activating button on the opposite side is of brushed aluminum. A recessed window protected with a rubber framing is what you point towards the bar code for scanning to take place. You also can set the device on this end on a flat surface.

Hiku adheres securely within easy reach on the refrigerator door.

The same device can be used with either an iOS or Android phone. The downloaded app on your phone talks to the cloud to retrieve your stored information. Hiku has an established and growing data base of 17 million bar codes that it draws upon.

The same device can be used with either an iOS or Android phone.

With the oval Hiku device in hand, I began scanning a variety of items and checking how they showed up on the phone.

Most familiar items were quickly categorized by the program.

When you select to display Details, you are able to edit the information. You can change the name in your list that was associated with the bar code, assign the item to another aisle, and enter the quantity you want to purchase. You can mark common items as “Regulars”.

I scanned a variety of shapes and conditions. Flat cardboard boxes of course do well. Yet, I had no problem with the bar codes being recognized on round cans, moist milk cartons, wrinkled labels, irregular tubes, or cellophane covered containers.

Hiku read bar codes of various and sundry shapes and conditions.

Hiku has three audible signals which translate into: It’s Added. Bar Code Not Recognized. Voice Not Recognized. One item Hiku didn’t recognize was a bottle of Port wine. I guess it doesn’t read Portuguese codes. However, referring to the paper Start Guide that came in the box, I found the solution.

Afer I scanned the bottle again, I immediately pushed the silver button, aimed the scanner at my mouth and said “Porto Morgado” using my best accent. Bingo. Hiku can even spell. There it was on the No Aisle category along with the Epson ink cartridge that the system didn’t know what to do with either. Hiku even spelled the brand name correctly from my verbal input.

I assigned my after dinner drink to the Beer/Wine/Liquor aisle.  Now that Hiku has my Port in its data base anyone can access the information immediately because I “taught” Hiku the bar code.

Porto Morgado has been added not only to my shopping list, but to Hiku’s data base for everyone’s benefit.

Alphabetical aisles come already defined, such as Baking/Spices, Dairy, Grains/Pasta, Meats, Produce. You can add a new aisle which I could have done for the ink, but I decided School/Office Supplies would suffice. I also could create a separate Shopping List for, say, Staples, and assign the Epson ink to that list instead to my general Grocery List.

PROS and CONS

To get started, you can name a list, go to that store, walk the aisles scanning bar codes from your common purchases to quickly set up a thorough list in the order in which you will find them in the store.

As you learn how to use Hiku, if you can’t figure something out, you can tap My Hiku and display links to the site’s FAQ’s or send an email to support@hiku.us. For example, although Hiku has an almost flat, easy learning curve, I didn’t intuit how to remove an item completely. I could “Cross It Off” by swiping it, but to get it off that list the FAQ that displayed on my phone told me I needed to hit the Clear button. I could not locate a Clear button, so I will contact Support for a more specific direction or graphic.

The My Hiku also has Tips, which are a reiteration of the compact Start Up Guide, so help is always a tap away on your phone. It is in place to allow language selection for voice recognition with three forms of English, two forms of Spanish, German, French, and Italian. The product currently supports English only. The other choices will be an enhancement.

Finally, the company responds to problems as evidenced by this notation on their website about their first version. “We’ve identified an issue in the hiku mobile app version 1.0 where new item refresh fails for AT&T customers under certain conditions. The issue is now fixed, available in the App Store as version 1.1. You can download it.”

CONCLUSION

This compact, patent pending, shopping assistant could be called a gadget according to Merriam Webster which says: “Gadget: an often small mechanical or electronic device with a practical use but often thought of as a novelty.”

Hiku is something that is new and unusual, as well as practical. Introduced at San Francisco’s Pepcom in November, Hiku saves the user time, provides organization to an often chaotic procedure, and is easy to use. Instead of scurrying from aisle to aisle, backtracking to the canned vegetable aisle because you forgot to get lima beans when there, you can methodically move up one aisle and down the next, checking items off your list.

I did not find a way, however, to mark that I had put the item in my shopping cart. So for now, you’ll need to remember what you selected and what you still need to pick off a shelf and place in your basket. It’s time to request an enhancement.

I was told that another enhancement I wanted had been requested by other users as well: printing. If your neighbor offers to pick up a few things for you when they go to the store, you’d probably prefer to give them a printed list instead of access to your Hiku account.

This scanner is also perfect for someone who has difficulty writing, perhaps due to severe arthritis. Scanning or speech can take the place of painful attempts at maneuvering a pencil.

Hiku is priced at $79, but I think $50 would be a better price if you weren’t sure you’d really use it once you had it. Also, if you were just counting dollars, a smaller price in today’s economy might be more enticing. However, it depends on how you value your time. This device is definitely a time saver, and “time is money”.

Founders Rob Katcher, CEO, and Rajan Bala, VP Engineering, urge you to “Get the App”.

This app is a must for the busy person who has a deadline and an empty refrigerator that needs filling. No fumbling for a list, no forgetting the one special thing you went to the store for. It’s a convenience for every single mom with limited time, any bachelor who hates to shop, and every person who has a large family and a long, varied shopping list.

Hiku is seeking retail partners 9bizdev@hiku.us) and developers (devrel@hiku.us) to pair their product with Hiku. You should contact them on their career page if you are an experienced mobile software engineer or a data scientist looking for a job.

The post Hiku: Add it to Your Shopping Cart appeared first on VR World.

While at Pepcom-San Francisco Kington’s representative introduced us to Kingston’s second-generation MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 battery charger and storage device. We were hoping for a significant improvement over the first generation. We were not very enthusiastic about last year’s first generation MobileLite Wireless unit. It was strictly a wireless card reader with internet pass thru capability, plus a portable battery for charging your mobile devices. The case design and functionality left a lot of room for improvement. We have Verizon’s expensive LTE data service which is great stateside. Other BSN* editors have wireless coverage from carriers that work best at their stateside offices. However, our editors travel outside the USA and several of them live in other countries. So stateside wireless data package coverage suddenly disappears or becomes outlandishly expensive.

Specifications

This is where the Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 steps up to store that data until you can get somewhere convenient to transfer it. It also extends your storage, streams your media, charges your devices, reads from USBs and SD cards, and allows you to connect to the web with it acting as a portable router. For those of you shooting multi-megabyte RAW photos with a Canon or Nikon DSLR camera, simply put your SDHC card into the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2. It will easily store those images until you get back to a place with a secure high-speed WiFi or wired network. Then you switch over to your second SDHC card and continue shooting the event. If you have a partner with you, they can take the MobileLite G2 with your SDHC card in it to the nearest secure WiFi and send the images and data files to your home or office webserver via FTP.

With its built-in 3.8v Li-ion battery at 4640 mAh, it can last for up to 13 hours of continuous use. That will keep your mobile devices alive, until you get back to your car or a location with 110V shore power.

Packaging

Kingston’s package explains the features on the front and inside flap of the box.

Just three items are in the box: a 1.5 foot USB 2.0 cable, a microSD to SD card adapter, and the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 device. You will have to download the Kingston MobileLite Wireless app from the appropriate app store – Google Play, Apple App Store, or Amazon Apps. We tested the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 application with the HTC One M8 (Android 4.4.4).

There is no documentation with the unit. You have to go to Kingston’s website for the manual. Your data storage is with an SD card, either the micro-SD format using an adapter or a standard SD card. For this review, we are using the Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 10 card with 30MB/S transfer capability.

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 includes 3G USB dongle support for direct connections and is compatible with Android 4.0+, iPad (2, 3rd Gen, 4th Gen, mini, Air), iPhone 4/4S/5, iPod Touch (iOS 7+), Kindle Fire, and Kindle Fire HD. When connected via USB to a PC, it can act as a USB 2.0 card reader for the system. For a desktop PC, it is compatible with many operating systems including Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Mac OSX V. 10.6.X+, and Linux v. 2.6.x+. The MobileLite Wireless G2 has an 802.11 g/n WiFi access point that supports WPA2 data encryption. WiFi is one of the ways to access the MobileLite G2 when using a smartphone or tablet, thus having a fast and secure 802.xx connection is important.

User Experience

The white bezel has six buttons, LEDs, and ports. Below from left to right, first is the battery LED/ power which indicate remaining battery time. Pressing the larger white Power button (fourth from left) makes the LED change colors. Green indicates 51 percent to 100 percent battery charge is remaining. Orange indicates 25 percent to 50 percent remaining, and red indicates less than 25 percent battery charge is remaining. Next is WiFi LED which indicates current status of WiFi broadcast. The next LED to the right is for Bridged that lets you know if the MobileLite G2 is bridged to an Internet gateway via WiFi or with the Ethernet cable port.

The larger Power button turns the MobileLite G2 on or off with a short one second press. Holding the power button down for three seconds will put it into WiFi mode. Next to the right is the Reset button. Holding it down for more than 10 seconds will reset the MobileLite G2 to its original default configuration. The Micro-B USB port is a multi-function port. It is the way you charge the MobileLite G2. Or you can connect to a standard USB port on your computer for data transfer. The microUSB port is to charge the device’s internal 4640 mAh battery. The battery charge status indicator LED makes sure you charge the MobileLite G2 before you walk out your home/office door.

On the opposite side of the white bezel is the Ethernet port. Using a standard Cat 5e/6 cable you can connect the MobileLite G2 to your wired network. This allows you to create a hotspot for wireless Internet access. On the end of the white bezel is the SD card slot and a USB 2.0 port. The USB port works with the USB Standard Type A plug, the most common USB male end connector.

Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 app on our HTC One M8 was minimalistic. There is no GUI, it is just like an old-fashioned bare bones file directory app. This is the place where we went back to the 13 page owner’s manual. It was not very informative. The manual could use some better examples. We suggest Kingston partner with a software developer to build a full-featured GUI application. That would take care of the only short coming we found. Using our 14Mbps WiFi connection at 100 feet distance we were able to quickly load multiple music files and large video files from the Cobra ultraHD dash cam (which will be our next review). The app helps you make folders for keeping track of music, videos, and data. The app does include a basic photo viewer as well as a music player.

Conclusion

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 is a light weight device which has an amazing number of features. All the Mobile G2’s features worked, however, you should allow yourself a bit of time to learn how to use them all. Pricing of the Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 at Amazon is only about five dollars more than the eyeFi Mobi 8GB WiFi card. Plus the MobileLite G2 has battery charging with up-to 13 hours of functionality and you can use any microSD or SD card for storage. BSN* rates it as a must-have for everyone, especially those readers who have one of the older smartphones or tablets without a micro-SD expansion card slot. Special thanks to Kingston for providing the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 charger and storage device, and the Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 10 card and to David Leong, and Shealyn Johnson for their assistance.

The post Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2: Review appeared first on VR World.

There are a lot of music streaming services out there on the internet, however there are only a few that are seriously successful. One of the reasons why Songza is unique to other music services and applications is that it is heavily focused on the social and crowdsourcing aspect of online music. The site itself has tons of curation for users’ own wants and desires, without just throwing vast databases of music at them. This is very similar to what Beats Music has been doing and is likely Google’s response to Apple’s buying Beats for $3 billion. Obviously, Google didn’t pay anywhere near $3 billion for Songza, but they surely did pay a fairly good price for a service with a user base in the millions.

Unfortunately, we don’t have exact figures for how many users Songza has, exactly. However we do know that as of 2012 they already had over 2 million users, which would logically put them somewhere near Beats Music’s user base, if not bigger. So, Google’s purchase of Songza may actually look better than Apple’s purchase of Beats, mainly because the primary justification for buying Beats was for Beats Music and the acquisition of Jimmy Iovine. I’m not entirely sure if Jimmy Iovine is worth a few billion dollars to have on your team, but the actual headphone business of Beats’ is actually more justifiable for $3 billion than the Beats Music service. Sure, a lot of people are saying good things about Beats Music, but it isn’t worth what Apple is paying.

So, if anything, Google’s purchase of Songza, while likely unnecessary appears very much to be a response to Apple’s overspending on Beats. Also, it will help with Google’s current batch of curated content which currently lacks the human touch that some of the social services like Songza bring. I honestly don’t get why these companies need to be acquired, but for some reason Apple and Google don’t think they can create a competitor to these services within their own existing framework without buying them.

The post Google Buys Songza Music Streaming Service appeared first on VR World.

According to The Wallstreet Journal, the long awaited Amazon phone is likely going to be an AT&T exclusive device. When one looks at this fact, many people may ask why Amazon would even bother to do something like that when nowadays almost all phones launch on all the carriers at the same time. Perhaps AT&T has paid Amazon to do so for a short period of time, however it makes very little sense in terms of Amazon’s global strategy and standard practice of trying to get as many devices in as many hands as possible.

Currently, the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX sells with 4G LTE connectivity from AT&T, which would make this WSJ rumor very plausible considering that AT&T is Amazon’s sole partner on LTE connectivity. Perhaps Amazon has negotiated such pricing with AT&T that nobody was willing to agree to their terms other than AT&T. It would be nice if Amazon broadened their horizons and went with other carriers for their 4G LTE connectivity, but it seems that they really have a well established relationship with AT&T.

The rumors from the WSJ and others are saying that we will likely see the Amazon phone coming out this week which would explain this leak. Many rumors about the Amazon phone claim that it will have 3D functionality and will run on Amazon’s own flavor of Android, which is expected. However, the 3D functionality is highly questionable when you think about the sour taste that many consumers have had with 3D in the past.  Amazon has posted a video teasing a new device tomorrow with a video showing people that are amazed by what they’re seeing.

However, what they will likely do is created a 3D interface and create a 3D-like experience where the phone’s interface moves in a 3D manner or images look 3D using an accelerometer and head tracking. There isn’t much more that we will likely find out between today and tomorrow so until then we recommend you sit and wait to hear more about this device. If its anything like Amazon’s past devices, it will be incredibly great performing, high quality, and incredibly inexpensive. But, it will still be fairly locked down to Amazon’s own ecosystem and may not appeal to everyone because of that fact alone.

The post Will The Amazon Phone Be an AT&T Exclusive? appeared first on VR World.

Spotify has stated publicly that they had an internal data breach that resulted in some unauthorized access of their systems and internal company data and that only one user was affected. According to Spotify, this issue only affects Android users and as a result, they are asking Android users to update their Spotify Android clients whenever prompted by the Google Play Store. Spotify has made it clear that no users’ data was compromised outside of the single individual and that no login or bank account data was compromised during the breach of Spotify’s systems. However, they did make it clear that they highly recommend that all Android users upgrade their client over the course of the next few days.

While Spotify’s investigation has only turned up a single affected user as a result of this recent breach, I suspect that there are others that they simply didn’t find. The likelihood that only one users’ account was compromised over the course of this breach seems highly unlikely and that they discovered the hole in their security and have patched it with an update. iPhone/iOS users appear to be completely unaffected, but Android users should heed Spotify’s warnings about updating the app as well as downloading updates from unknown sources. The only source of an update for Spotify’s Android app should be the Google Play store and nowhere else.

As Spotify grows in popularity, there are going to be more attempts to break into the service’s databases and access their users’ data. The company’s CTO has already notified the public of this issue and that a fix has already been applied. Hopefully something like this doesn’t happen again, but I have a feeling that whomever gained unauthorized access to Spotify’s systems was not going after user data, yet. If Spotify’s claims are correct, then whomever attacked them likely was looking for some of their own proprietary information and may be back again to try to steal user data. Nowadays, user data is so poorly protected by companies that Spotify wanted to make it clear that users’ data with the exception of one person had no been compromised (to their knowledge).

The post Spotify Data Breach, Only One User Affected appeared first on VR World.