Android

Android: Google plans to remove substandard apps from Google Play

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google is updating the Android spam and minimum functionality policy to weed out low-quality apps in the Google Play store.

Here are the details:

  • Starting September 1, 2024, existing substandard apps will be removed from the Google Play Store.
  • New apps that Google determines as low-quality will not be allowed in the Google Play Store from that day forward.

Google lists several examples of app types that it considers substandard:

  • Static apps, for example apps that display text only. (new)
  • Apps with “very little” content, for instance “single wallpaper apps”. (new)
  • Apps that have no function or do nothing.
  • Apps that do not install.
  • Apps that do install, but do not load.
  • Apps that load, but are not responsive.

In other words: Google is expanding the classification of substandard Android apps to include static apps and apps that do little or nothing.

The company reasons that these types of apps are “not consistent with a functional and engaging user experience” and therefore “are not allowed on Google Play”.

Expect these apps to be removed from Google Play in the coming months.

Closing Words

It is understandable that apps that do not load or crash offer a bad user experience. Clearly, the developers of such apps need to get back to the drawing board to sort out these major issues before offering them in the Play Store.

While apps that do very little are not harmful, they may be used to swarm the Store with similar types of apps.

Imagine a single wallpaper app that is copied thousands of times to show a different wallpaper in each of the apps. The developer could target different keywords with each of the apps, thus flooding the Store.

Still, this could have been dealt with in other ways probably.

What is your take on this? Do you download and install Android apps frequently? Have you encountered substandard apps in the past? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Speedcheck on mobile phone

How to turn your Android device into an Internet hotspot

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Lately, we have been having some problems with our local Internet provider. Internet goes down unannounced at times or it is barely usable.

That is a big issue if you need the Internet to make a living. For some time now, I have been using Android’s mobile hotspot feature to regain access to the Internet.

Good news is, it is really easy to set up and use. Before we look at that, I’d like to list where a mobile hotspot may be useful.

  • When the local Internet connection is down or unstable.
  • To avoid public Wi-Fi.
  • To replace the local Internet connection entirely.
  • In locations without Internet, but mobile connectivity.

Word of warning: Using the Android device as a mobile hotspot uses-up your monthly data. Not a problem if you are on an unlimited plan, but very much so a problem if your monthly data allocation is rather low.

Using your Android phone for Internet

Android configuring mobile hotspots on a Samsung Galaxy A55

The main idea is to turn the Android device into a mobile hotspot. Other devices may then use Wi-Fi to connect to the Android device in question.

This requires a few things:

  • Both devices need to be in range.
  • The Internet quality is determined by the mobile connection of the Android device.
  • I’m using a Samsung Galaxy A55 for the guide, but the experience should be very similar on other Android devices.

Here is a step-by-step guide to set this up:

  1. Swipe down twice to display the full Quick Settings panel.
  2. Locate Mobile Hotspot and tap on the feature.
  3. If Wi-Fi is turned on, you get a prompt to turn it off. Select the Turn off option to continue.

The mobile hotspot is now enabled and you should see the Android device when you check for wireless access points.

To check name and password, it is necessary to do the following:

  1. Swipe down twice again to bring up all Quick Settings.
  2. Tap and hold the mobile hotspot icon until the configuration menu opens.

There you find the name, password, and band information, which you can change here by tapping on the information.

  • Change the wireless access spot’s name.
  • Change the password that you need to type to connect to the Android device’s hotspot.
  • Switch the band from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz, or vice versa.
  • Make changes to the security (WPA).

You can furthermore make plenty of other configuration options. This includes enabling Wi-Fi 6 support, setting up a one-time password for guests, or change auto-turn off preferences.

Closing Words

Mobile hotspots provided by your Android device (Apple has a similar feature) are helpful in many situations. They may improve security and get you over periods where the regular Internet connection may not be available at all or unstable.

Have you tried the mobile hotspot feature of your mobile device? When do you use it, or when would you use it? Feel free to leave a comment below.

7-Eleven

Adding the number 7 to your password might make it stronger

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Most computer users should know by now that unique and stronger passwords are better. But what exactly means stronger? Most say that adding a mix of characters, including upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters will do the trick. Combine that with a decent length, say 16 or more characters, and your password should be hard to crack.

ProxyScrape, a service for scraping websites using proxies, says that using the number 7 in your password makes it stronger than any other number that you may pick.

Here is why: while many pick 7 as their preferred one-digit number, most computer users pick other numbers when they set passwords.

This is not a problem for users who use password generators, but those who pick passwords manually tend to prefer 0, 1, and 2 over other numbers.

Password Generator of KeePass
Password generation in the KeePass password manager

It happens that 7 is the last choice when it comes to numbers, according to ProxyScrape CEP Thibeau Maerevoet (via Betanews).

So, if you pick 7, or if your password generator picks it for you, then you throw a wrench into the tires of the brute forcing machine.

This is especially true for dictionary attacks. These use preset words and sometimes words with characters added to them. It is, for instance, common, to test words, and then the same array of words but with the character 1 added to them.

Similarly, dictionary attacks may replace the character I with 1, or E with 3.

Tip: find out if yo should save passwords in browsers.

This does not really affect users who use very strong auto-generated passwords. It does not really matter if a 20 character password that is randomly generated has a 7 in it or not. But passwords that users pick, like dallascowboys1, may have a better chance at surviving the first wave of attacks when you replace that 1 with a 7. Even better, put the 7 somewhere in the middle, say dall7ascowboys.

What is your take on the observation? Will you start adding 7s to your passwords in the future?

How to use Windows’ emergency restart feature

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

If you are a Windows user, you may have encountered situations where the system appears to be stuck. Programs do not open at all anymore or very slowly, or you see a dreaded loading animation on the screen that does not go away, no matter how long you wait.

The good old “have you tried turning it off and on again” fixes these kinds of issues often.

The IT Crowd: Have you tried turning it off and on again

Sometimes however, turning off the computer or restarting it is not as easy as it may sound. What if clicking on the Start icon does nothing? While there are numerous ways of turning off the PC, not all are equal.

Note: if nothing works, pressing and holding the power button of the PC will restart the computer eventually.

Emergency Restart in Windows

One of the ways that users tackle an unresponsive PC is by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del. This keyboard combination displays several actions in a fullscreen window.

The main actions are lock, switch user, sign out, and cancel. There is also a power button in the lower right corner, which you may use to restart or shut down the PC.

The Ctrl-Alt-Del window of the Windows operating system

What many may not know is that there is also an emergency restart option hidden on the screen. All you have to do to activate it is to hold down the Ctrl-key on the keyboard before clicking on the power button.

Instead of displaying the restart and shut down options, Windows shows the emergency restart screen.

The Emergency restart option of the Windows operating system

Here, you simply click on the ok button to restart the PC immediately.

Windows informs you that any work that has not been saved may be lost during the process. It even warns, rather dramatically, that this should only be used as the last resort.

Closing Words

So, if you run into a situation where the usual options to restart the Windows PC may not work, you could give this emergency restart option a try, provided that you can still get into the Ctrl-Alt-Del interface.

What is your preferred way of restarting or shutting down Windows when things do not work anymore?

Amazon

5 tips to survive Prime Day without going bankrupt

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Amazon’s Prime Day is a major shopping event. Even if you are not an Amazon customer, you may notice that another Prime Day is about to happen when all of your favorite sites suddenly start to list deals.

While it may be tempting to shop at Amazon during Prime Day, it is usually better to play it cool and not fall into the trap of overspending on items that you may not even need or are not the best choice.

Here are five tips.

Tip 1: Prime Day does not mean you get the best price

While news outlets and sites try to paint Prime Day in the best light possible, it is always a good idea to compare the price on Amazon with other marketplaces.

Sites like Idealo or Google Shopping help finding the best price for most products. Other options include searching for the product name using your favorite search engine or searching for items on marketplaces like eBay.

Tip 2: Make a list of what you need before Prime Day

Visiting the Amazon website or app on Prime Day is like being a kid in a candy store. Products with discounts are shown left and right, and it is easy enough to get distracted and add items to the shopping cart because they are discounted, and not because you may need them.

It is a good idea to create a list of items that you need or want to buy prior to big shopping events. I have a list of about 15 items that I would buy during Prime Day, Black Friday, or other shopping events, provided that the price is right.

Yes, that sounds like a lot of stuff, but many are replacements for items that need replacing in the coming months or the next year.

Tip 3: Do not overspend

Regardless of whether you have created a list of articles or not, it is a good idea to set a budget for Prime Day. It is quite easy to overspend during major shopping events.

Before, during, and after you add items to your shopping cart, you will see promotions or other items. It is often just a click or two to add these to the cart as well.

Even if you stick to the plan, you may overspend. Either, because you did not compare prices, or because you opted for something more expensive. Why not buy the phone with more storage, the slightly larger TV, or the video card that promises more frames? Because you may overspend in that case.

Tip 4: Do not rush yourself

Many offers may be limited. Amazon may not have endless stock of an item, and when it is gone, it is gone. While that speaks for rushing and buying immediately, rushing also means that you may not compare prices or may buy items that you do not really need, but fear missing out on.

Even if an item sells out quickly, you may still be able to purchase it at a later point in time. Black Friday is just around the corner, and so are the dozen or so other “sales” that happen regularly online.

Tip 5: Do not browse randomly

It can be tempting to check out a few categories. If you like to play Switch or PlayStation games, you may be tempted to browse deals in those categories.

Browsing may lead to buying items that you did not have any intention of buying. This may lead to overspending and you ending up with items that you may not have researched properly before buying them.

What about you? Do you buy items regularly on major shopping events such as Prime Day or Black Friday?

Advertising

How to disable Firefox’s built-in ad-tracking feature

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

With the release of Firefox 128 came the integration of a new experimental feature that Mozilla calls Privacy-Preserving Attribution.

The feature is turned on by default, which means that users of the browser need to become active, if they want to disable it.

Mozilla published a support webpage that explains that Privacy-Preserving Attribution is.

Here is the main quote:

Mozilla is prototyping this feature in order to inform an emerging Web standard designed to help sites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about individual people. By offering sites a non-invasive alternative to cross-site tracking, we hope to achieve a significant reduction in this harmful practice across the web.

In other words: sites and advertisers may use the built-in feature for tracking.

Like Google Chrome’s Ad Privacy feature, it is using the term privacy loosely, some would say disingenuously.

Both systems change how users are tracked and call it an improvement to privacy. In the end, it still means that users are tracked. The fundamental difference is that users are no longer tracked on an individual level.

Mozilla says that its new system can only be used by a small number of sites in Firefox 128. The organization does not mention these sites.

How to disable Ad-Tracking in Firefox

Firefox Website Advertising Preferences

For privacy, disabling these features is better than keeping them enabled or enabling them.

Here is how you do that in Firefox:

  1. Select the Firefox Menu and then Settings when the menu opens.
  2. Switch to Privacy & Security on the main Settings page.
  3. Scroll down until you come to Website Advertising Preferences.
  4. Uncheck the box “Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement”.

That is all there is to it.

Pro tip: The user preference dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled determines whether this feature is turned on or off. Set it to false to disable it.

Closing Words

It is not without irony that Mozilla’s implementation in Firefox is in fact worse from a user’s point of view than Google’s. Google is prompting users, using euphemistic words, about the ad tracking feature. Mozilla has just enabled the feature without prompting users about it.

Mozilla has recently bought an ad-tech startup called Anonym, which it says is working on privacy-preserving ad technology.

Are you a Firefox user? What is your take on this? Feel free to leave a comment down below!

Thunderbird 128

Thunderbird 128 Email client is now available

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The team behind the open source email client has released the long-awaited Thunderbird 128 to the public. The version is not yet available as an update, only as a direct download from the official website.

You can upgrade from current stable versions of Thunderbird to the new release, but need to run the installer to do that.

As far as system requirements are concerned, Thunderbird 128 won’t run anymore on pre-Windows 10 or macOS 10.15 devices. Users who use add-ons or customizations may run into issues, but this is the case for every new major release. It may be a good idea to wait a few release cycles as many of the issues may have been sorted out by then.

The official release notes are quite long, which is to be expected.

Thunderbird 128: a quick rundown

While there have been a good number of changes, Thunderbird 128 looks and behaves for the most part like Thunderbird 115. This is good for consistency.

There are differences though. UI density, for example, affects the multi-message view now as well. I prefer to use compact, as it shows more messages and information on the screen at the same time.

You can change density and other layout-related preferences by selecting View of the menu at the top.

On Windows, Thunderbird is now using the native notifications system. There is also support for operating system accent colors and custom account colors are now shown in the form field when composing a message.

If you want to display full names and email addresses of all recipients in a message list, you can do so now with the new preference mail.addressDisplayFormat. This needs to be set in the advanced configuration, which you may access via Tools > Settings > Config Editor.

The new version improves its OpenPGP implementation as well.

Closing Words

Thunderbird 128 looks like a polished version of Thunderbird 115. The big update does not interfere with the layout nearly as much as the last major update of the email client.

Many of the changes are cosmetic in nature, but these do not get in the way either. This may be different for users who use lots of add-ons or customization options, as extensions need to be updated to remain compatible with the new Thunderbird release.

Again, most users may want to wait a couple of months before they start considering upgrading to the new releases.

What about you? Do you use Thunderbird? What is your take on the new Thunderbird 128?

youtube

Error 403: Google change causes playback issues for third-party Youtube apps

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

If you use an app like SmartTube or NewPipe, you may have received error 403 messages when trying to play videos on YouTube recently.

This happened to me on two occasions in the past days. SmartTube was the app that I used on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. I could browse YouTube and run searches, but any video that I tried to play returned a 403 error.

Note: An update fixed the issue on my end. Maybe this is also working on your end to get the issue resolved.

Whenever something like this happens, it is likely that Google-owned YouTube has made a change. Whether it is a deliberate change to torpedo adblockers or third-party YouTube apps, or something unintentional is not always clear right away.

This time, it appears, that Google seems to have made a change to block bots from accessing its videos. The information comes from the developer of NewPipe, who published details on Reddit.

Here is the summary:

  • YouTube has been testing an anti-bot check on streaming URLs from its HTML5 clients for at least a few weeks.
  • This added a new URL query parameter, which in turn caused invalid responses “after some time”.

The developer claims that the anti-bot check is “hard to implement” and that it “requires a full browser environment”.

Google furthermore has started to require the parameter on YouTube, which also resulted in 403 responses. Last but not least, Google rolled out a new JavaScript player, which turned out to be another cause for the experienced issue.

The developer’s analysis suggests that the changes that Google made this time may not have been aimed directly at users of third-party apps.

YouTube’s terms of service state that third-party apps may not block advertisement on the platform. It is likely that Google will continue its fight against content blocking and third-party apps that block ads. This time, it appears that it was likely just a side-effect.

The big question: if you could watch YouTube only with ads, would you? Would you pay for YouTube Premium to get rid of them?

AppBuster update adds recommendations and ARM support

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

O&O Software’s free AppBuster app for Windows was one of the first programs that I reviewed on this site.

The latest update introduces several important changes and features that deserve to be mentioned here o this site.

If you have used AppBuster in the past you know what the program is about. It lets you uninstall many built-in or user-installed programs on Windows devices.

O&O AppBuster 1.4.1345 is now available. The application is still free to use. Here are the three core changes introduced in the new version:

  • O&O AppBuster is now compatible with Windows on ARM devices.
  • The app makes recommendations now regarding the programs that you may want to consider for removal.
  • It detects new apps and programs that were installed since the last run of the application.

Let us take a closer look at one of the new features.

Recommendations

O&O AppBuster recommendations for removal

Tech savvy users know which apps to remove from their devices and which not. The same may not be true for users who are not that interested in tech.

The recommendation system is for these users. It highlights apps that the users may want to take a closer look at when it comes to picking apps for removal.

Recommendations may either suggest to remove a program or may highlight an app as optional.

On a test Windows 11 system, it recommended to remove the Feedback Hub, Game Bar, and Microsoft 365 (Office) apps among several other Microsoft apps.

It listed other Microsoft apps as optional, as well as non-Microsoft apps, including Adobe Acrobat Reader.

AppBuster does not reveal why it is making a recommendation. It is certainly possible that it recommends removing apps that the user uses frequently or even regularly.

It would be great if the program could take into account last use dates or other information to improve recommendations.

The other changes

Support for ARM platform starting with Windows 11 version 24H2 is a welcome addition, considering that Microsoft is pushing Windows on the platform.

For now, it is the only Copilot+ PCs ready platform, but this will change once AMD and Intel release new silicon.

Detection of new apps can also be useful. It makes it easier to spot new apps that Microsoft sneaked-in, and also user-installed apps.

Closing Words

O&O AppBuster continues to be an excellent piece of software. Yes, there are other programs out there that can also remove apps in bulk. It is perfectly fine to continue using those.

My favorite is winget right now, as it is easy to use and very powerful.

You can download the latest AppBuster version from the official website.

Do you use programs like AppBuster to remove apps and programs that you do not need? Let us know in the comment section down below!

Chrome

Report: Google sneaked in code in Chrome that is favoring Google

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

A report suggests that Google has sneaked code into Chromium-based browsers that is favoring Google-owned properties. Browsers like Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge appear affected.

If true, it would give critics of Google’s dominance in web browsing a mighty powerful argument.

Here are the details: Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers give *.google.com sites full access to system / tab CPU usage, GPU usage, memory usage, detailed processor information, and a logging backchannel.

Luca Casonato published information about this on X and Simon Willison published code that anyone may run to verify the claim.

Chrome returning information on google-owned properties
The information that Chrome reveals to Google when the code is run

Here is how that is done:

  1. Open Google Chrome on your system.
  2. Load https://www.google.com/ or any other *.google.com property.
  3. Select Menu > More Tools > Developer Console.
  4. Switch to the Console tab, if it is not active already.
  5. Type allow pasting.
  6. Paste the following code: chrome.runtime.sendMessage(‘nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome’, {method: ‘cpu.getInfo’}, response => {console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));});
  7. Press the Enter-key.

Chrome returns information when the code is run on a Google property. It returns an error message when you run it on any other site.

The code is accessible on the Chromium Code Search website. You can load it here and check it out yourself.

Casonato suggests that the exclusive feature is a violation of the Digital Markets Act as browser vendors “must give the same capabilities to everyone”.

Closing Words

It is unclear if and how Google is using the information. Casonato says that he does not believe that the company uses it for something malicious or invasive, such as fingerprinting.

Still, Google favoring Google in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers is giving critics of Google’s dominance in web browsing another reason why a browser monopoly or duopoly (if you consider Safari), is bad for users.

It is also interesting to note that other Chromium-based browsers have kept the code in their browsers. It is unclear why.

Which browser do you use mainly and why?