Do you use smartphone apps to organise lunch dates, make convenient online purchases or communicate the most intimate details of your existence? Beware, these apps may be secretly talking to each other and potentially breaching your security, researchers warn.
A study showed that applications on the android phones are able to talk to one another and trade information. The biggest security risks were some of the least utilitarian — apps that pertained to personalisation of ringtones, widgets, and emojis, the researchers said. “Researchers were aware that apps may talk to one another in some way, shape, or form,” said Gang Wang, assistant professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, US.
But “this study shows undeniably with real-world evidence over and over again is that app behaviour, whether it is intentional or not, can pose a security breach depending on the kinds of apps you have on your phone”, Wang added. The types of threats fall into two major categories, either a malware app that is specifically designed to launch a cyber-attack or apps that simply allow for collusion and privilege escalation.
In the latter category, it is not possible to quantify the intention of the developer, so collusion, while still a security breach, can in many cases be unintentional, the researchers said. The findings were presented at the Association for Computing Machinery Asia Computer and Communications Security Conference in Dubai.
The team examined a whopping 110,150 apps over three years including 100,206 of Google Play’s most popular apps and 9,994 malware apps from Virus Share a private collection of malware app samples. “Of the apps we studied, we found thousands of pairs of apps that could potentially leak sensitive phone or personal information and allow unauthorised apps to gain access to privileged data,” commented Daphne Yao, associate professor at Virginia Tech.
“We hope this study will be a source for the industry to consider re-examining their software development practices and incorporate safeguards on the front end,” Wang added.
Publish date: April 4, 2017 10:47 am| Modified date: April 4, 2017 10:47 am
If you need to easily work with documents locally and in the cloud on your Chromebook, see how to do so with a Google Play supported device, WPS Office, and Dropbox.
For some users, the Chromebook isn't an option because they believe it exists entirely in the cloud. With the latest iteration of Chrome OS (on certain devices), that has become a completely outmoded idea. Now that Google is rolling out Android app support for more and more Chromebooks, it is absolutely possible to take the devices back from the cloud and work locally. Although it is has been possible to achieve this from the start by working offline, people weren't happy until they had their hands on a standard locally-running/saving app.
That time has come. Now that you can run Android apps on Chrome OS, the likes of WPS Office can be added to the Chrome OS arsenal of productivity apps. The best part is you can link WPS Office to your Dropbox account and work both out of and in the cloud. Let's install WPS Office and
If you've been wondering how to enable the Google Play Store on a supported Chromebook device, Jack Wallen shows you how.
You've heard plenty about Chrome OS running Android apps. You may have even witnessed images of various Android apps running on a Chromebook. But chances are, you've yet to read about how to actually make it work. I happen to be lucky enough to own one of the currently supported Chromebook devices (Pixel 2) that supports the installation of Android apps. I have to tell you, this new feature brings a whole new level of productivity to the Chromebook. Not only can you easily extend the feature set of your device, you can handle productivity in ways you might not have otherwise enjoyed.
The only caveat (besides having to have one of the few select supported devices), is that installing Android apps isn't as simple as heading over to the Google Play Store and clicking Install on the apps you want. First off, you have to have the latest build of Chrome OS (build 53 or newer, with
Let me know if this has ever happened to you: you come across an article with one or more interesting Android apps and you go to download one of them… only to find that you can’t see it in the Play Store. You ask around and other people can see it, but you can’t.
This was a common question when Pokemon Go first came out (a number of people, myself included, couldn’t see it in the Play Store).
Or maybe you can see it but can’t download it for some reason. Or maybe it gets stuck. Regardless, there’s an app you want but can’t get. While these kinds of problems aren’t exactly common, they aren’t rare either. The good news is that there are workarounds. The bad news is that they aren’t always easy.
Device Restrictions
The most common explanation is that the developers of the app have simply marked it as “incompatible” for your device.
This doesn’t actually mean that the app won’t work on your device (though that’s certainly a possibility). The more likely reason why developers do this is because there may be weird glitches or bugs on particular models that can’t be fixed or the developers don’t have the resources to fix.
Also note that sometimes developers will mark an app as “phone only” or “tablet only”, which is just an easier way to make that app incompatible with a broader range of devices. That’s why some apps can’t be installed on your Moto G or Kindle Fire but will work fine on a Galaxy Tab.
Region Restrictions
The other most common explanation for an unavailable app is that you’re located in an unsupported region of the world. I know it seems unfair, but there are many apps that, for example, only work in the US — and in order to stave off clueless reviews, the developers made the app region-restricted.
Image Credit: Denys Prykhodov via Shutterstock.com
You could go ahead and try forcing an install for these kinds of apps as well, but region restriction is a bit more complicated than device restriction.
I mean, there’s no point to installing the apps for Hulu or Ally Bank if you live in France because even if you manage to get the app installed, you still won’t be able to create an account or use their services — so the only effective solution is to contact the developers and ask them to expand into more regions.
Gyroscopes, accelerometers, ambient sensors, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, proximity sensors, and even geomagnetic field sensors — these are all bits of hardware that may or may not be missing from your device, especially if you have a budget model or a device that’s several years old, and certain apps require these sensors to work properly.
However, it’s more likely for apps to be labeled incompatible simply for the convenience of the developers. Underlying structural changes to Android from version to version may require developers to include workarounds for “backwards compatibility” — and instead of wasting valuable time on this, they may just mark the app incompatible.
A not-so-common hurdle is that some apps are produced and maintained by device manufacturers, and such apps are designed to take advantage of features that are only available on the manufacturer’s devices (or so they’d like you to believe).
If you run into an app that appears compatible with your device (i.e., the Play Store allows you to download and install said app) yet the download doesn’t work for some reason, the problem may be elsewhere — like within the Play Store app itself.
If a download or installation isn’t working, run through these potential solutions in the order that they’re listed:
Log out of the Play Store app, open the device Settings and navigate to the Applications section, find and tap on “Google Play Store”, then tap on Clear Data and Clear Cache. Log back into the Play Store app and try again.
Uninstall the Play Store app (which will revert it back to factory settings and disable it), then re-enable the Play Store app and try again.
Reboot the device by holding the power button and selecting Reboot. This may solve temporary issues like another app’s update request being stuck and blocking your ability to download a new app.
Apps take up a surprising amount of storage space. Just browsing through my own app list, I see that OneNote, Spotify, Maps, and Dropbox take up over 100 MB each while Groupon, SleepTime, YouTube, Gmail, and a bunch of other apps are using over 50 MB each.
It all adds up and can result in insufficient storage space on your device, especially if you’re using an older device (which is likely if you’re dealing with app incompatibility issues) — and when you don’t have enough space, apps can’t be downloaded or updated.
The only real solution here is to free up space on your device by uninstalling unused apps, moving photos and videos to external or cloud storage, deleting extraneous files, and clearing system and app
Which Apps Can’t You Download?
Now that we’ve shed some light, we hope you better understand why that app you want to download is incompatible with your device. Except for upgrading your device or downloading the app APK and forcing an install, there isn’t much you can do.
