The consumer version of Blackberry Messenger is shutting down May 31. CNET reports: Emtek, the company BlackBerry partnered with in 2016 to run the consumer version of the messaging app, said in a blog post Thursday that the technology industry is "very fluid" and despite "substantial efforts," users have moved on to other platforms. "We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date," Emtek said.

Mark Wilson, BlackBerry's chief marketing officer, said that though the company is disappointed, BBM users won't be without a secure messaging platform. They can now go to the Google Play store to download BBMe, the enterprise version of the app that BlackBerry continues to run. The app will be free the first year. Then a 6-month subscription will cost $2.49. BlackBerry is working on an iOS app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After April 15, inmates at the Adult Detention Center in Lowndes County, Mississippi will no longer be allowed to visit with family members face to face. Newton County, Missouri, implemented an in-person visitor ban last month. The Allen County Jail in Indiana phased out in-person visits earlier this year. All three changes are part of a nationwide trend toward "video visitation" services. Instead of seeing their loved ones face to face, inmates are increasingly limited to talking to them through video terminals. Most jails give family members a choice between using video terminals at the jail -- which are free -- or paying fees to make calls from home using a PC or mobile device.

Even some advocates of the change admit that it has downsides for inmates and their families. Ryan Rickert, jail administrator at the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center, acknowledged to The Commercial Dispatch that inmates were disappointed they wouldn't get to see family members anymore. Advocates of this approach point to an upside for families: they can now make video calls to loved ones from home instead of having to physically travel to the jail. These services are ludicrously expensive. Video calls cost 40 cents per minute in Newton County, 50 cents per minute in Lowndes County, and $10 per call in Allen County. Outside of prison, of course, video calls on Skype or FaceTime are free. These "visitation" services are often "grainy and jerky, periodically freezing up altogether," reports Ars. As for why so many jails are adopting them, it has a lot to do with money. "In-person visits are labor intensive. Prison guards need to escort inmates to and from visitation rooms, supervise the visits, and in some cases pat down visitors for contraband. In contrast, video terminals can be installed inside each cell block, minimizing the need to move inmates around the jail." The video-visitation systems also directly generate revenue for jails.

"While lawmakers debate what to do about the roboscourge, engineers have cooked up some clever ways to make bots work for us, not against us," writes the Washington Post, taking a look at apps like the $4-per-month RoboKiller -- which offers malicious "answer bots": They're voicemail messages that try to keep robots and human telemarketers on the line, listening to nonsense. Answer bot options range from Trump impersonators and extended coughing sessions to someone doing vocal exercises. Even better, RoboKiller will send you an often-hilarious recording of the interaction. (It only uses these recordings when it's very sure it's a spam call.)

Another service, called Jolly Roger, doesn't sell itself as a robocall blocker but takes this auto-generated annoyance idea a step further by actively trying to game the spammers' systems, such as when to press 1 to speak to a human. It calls this tech "artificial stupidity." It costs $11.88 per year.

It's possible you're better off not engaging with a robocall in the hopes the dialer with decide the line is dead. And it's also not clear how much these actually cost the people placing robocalls. But any time robocallers spend with your bot might be minutes they're not calling someone else, so you can think of it as community service.
I'm also not sure this does any good -- but the Post's article also includes a run-down of other robocall-blocking services available from both wireless carriers and independent companies. It recommends starting with the free YouMail app, which collates data from 10 million registered users to determine which calls to block -- and in addition, "tries to trick known robocallers into taking you off their lists by playing them the beep-beep-beep sound of a dead line."

If you live in America, you can also add your phone number to the Federal government's official "Do not call" registry. "It won't help much," writes the Post, "but it only takes 30 seconds so why not?"

Friday CNN reported on "what you can do right now to stop robocalls."

"Short of throwing your phone in the garbage, there's no way to avoid them altogether. But wireless providers and smartphone developers offer tools to filter out at least some unwanted calls." - Verizon's Call Filter app is free to download on iPhones and Android devices. The company announced Thursday the app will offer some free features -- including auto-blocking calls from known fraudsters, showing warning banners for suspicious calls, and a spam reporting tool. For $2.99 a month per line, the Call Filter app can use a phonebook feature to look up the names of unknown callers, and it can show a "risk meter" for spam calls.

- AT&T's Call Protect has similar free features and add-ons with a $3.99 per month subscription. (iOS and Android)

- T-Mobile phones come loaded with Scam ID, which warns customers about suspicious phone numbers. It's also free to activate Scam Block, which automatically rejects calls from those numbers. An additional app called Name ID offers premium caller identification for $4 per line monthly. (iOS and Android)

- Sprint's Premium Caller ID , which comes pre-installed, looks up unknown numbers and filters and blocks robocalls for $2.99 per line.

- Google's Pixel phones also give you the option to have your voice assistant answer suspicious calls for you. The phone can transcribe the conversation and lets you decide whether to answer.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Moolah Mobile is teaming up with SurgePhone Wireless to offer people a new way to pay their cell phone bills -- by putting ads on their homescreens. Moolah CEO Vernell Woods (pictured above) said the startup has already been offering gift cards and other rewards to users who view its homescreen ads. So this is a similar model, except instead of earning gift cards, the ads are subsidizing cell phone service from Surge. The ads show up on users' homescreens during interstitial moments between using apps, so the goal is to offer free service without consumers having to change their behavior. Woods said all that ad time adds up, with "the average person who's using their phone on a consistent basis" viewing "easily between two to three hours" of homescreen ads each day. And that's enough to pay for the "equivalent" of Surge's $10 monthly plan. On the other hand, if for some reason a subscriber isn't hitting the necessary total, Woods said they can also earn more points by accepting offers or taking surveys. The subsidized wireless service will roll out in Florida, Virginia, Georgia and Texas initially, with an aim of reaching 40,000 locations by the end of the year.

Samsung is working on a pair of new foldable smartphones to follow its Galaxy Fold, a smartphone with dual screens that fold in half like a notebook, and another that works just like any other. Bloomberg reports: The South Korean manufacturer is said to be developing a clamshell-like device, and another that folds away from the user similar to Huawei's Mate X, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing internal plans. The $1,980 Galaxy Fold that Samsung plans to release in April folds inward like a notebook. While it's still too early to gauge how much demand there will be for smartphones with flexible screens, Samsung and other rivals are eager to gain an edge over Apple Inc. in the $495 billion industry, especially amid cooling sales.

Samsung plans to unveil the vertically folding phone late this year or early next year, and is using mock-ups to fine-tune the design, the people said. The gadget is designed with an extra screen on the outside, but the manufacturer may remove it depending on how customers respond to a similar display on the Galaxy Fold, they said. The outfolding device, which already exists as a prototype after being considered as Samsung's first foldable gadget, will roll out afterward, the people said. It will be thinner because it has no extra screen, they said. Samsung may also incorporate an in-display fingerprint sensor for its foldable lineup, as it did for the Galaxy S10 model announced last month, they said. The report also touched on the Galaxy Fold's screen imperfection. Apparently, a crease "appears on the panel after it's been folded about 10,000 times, and Samsung is considering offering free screen replacements after releasing the product."

"The Galaxy Fold's screen imperfection develops on a protective film covering the touch sensor bonded with the display underneath," the report adds. "That's one reason why Samsung kept the phone inside a glass case at MWC in Barcelona last month."

A new patent application from Apple, titled "Electronic Devices with Flexible Displays," describes how the company could prevent foldable smartphone displays from getting damaged in extreme temperatures. "While at or in the region of typical temperatures hospitable to humans, folding systems may work fine, but adhesives and other elements used in a device's production may become more resistant to flexing at cold temperatures, which could cause unwanted wear or damage to the display if attempted in such conditions," reports AppleInsider. "To mitigate the cold temperature, Apple simply suggests there should be some way to warm up the area of the display panel where the bend takes place." From the report: As part of Apple's solution, an onboard temperature sensor is used to determine how warm the device is, and whether or not there is any danger to allowing the screen to be flexed by the user. The warming process itself can be performed by a heating element located near to the section that bends the most, with heat conductors transferring the warmth to where it is required. A heating element may not be practical to add to such a device, which has led to Apple suggesting an alternative, namely using the heat generated by illuminating the screen. To do this, a screensaver could be used that concentrates most on the bent section, such as by making it brighter and lit up more than the rest of the screen.

As the heating process could take time to complete, Apple notes there is a danger of the display being flexed before it is safe to do so, something it has also considered. Aside from warning the user on an attempt to bend, Apple believes the use of a latching mechanism to keep the device closed while folded may be worth investigating, both as a mechanical latch and by the folded device being held shut by magnets. When the temperature of the area is relatively safe, the latching system can be disengaged and the user will be free to open the device once again. The patent application does not seem to answer the question of how to prevent the user from folding up an unfolded device, but it could be feasible some form of locking mechanism could be used when the smartphone is flat.

LG's flagship G8 smartphone has been officially launched today, bringing many expected features that were teased over the past few months and several not-so-expected features. One such unusual feature in the G8 is its palm vein recognition, dubbed Hand ID, which LG claims is the first to offer this capability. TechCrunch reports: From the company's press materials, "LG's Hand ID identifies owners by recognizing the shape, thickness and other individual characteristics of the veins in the palms of their hands." It turns out, like faces and fingerprints, everyone's got a unique set of hand veins, so once registered, you can just however your hot blue blood tubes over the handset to quickly unlock in a few seconds. The Z camera also does depth-sensing face unlock that's a lot harder to spoof than the kind found on other Android handsets. LG's also put the tech to use for a set of Air Motion gestures, which allow for hands-free interaction with various apps like the camera (selfies) and music (volume control). Other features of the G8 include a 6.1-inch QHD+ "Crystal Sound OLED" display that uses the screen as an audio amplifier. There's a Snapdragon 855 processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage, three cameras on the rear including a 16-megapixel Super Wide (F1.9), 12-megapixel Standard (F1.5), and 12-megapixel Telephoto (F2.4), a 3,500mAh battery that charges via USB-C, a headphone jack, and 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC.

Qualcomm has unveiled its latest 5G modem, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X55. The chip is the company's second-generation 5G modem and successor to the Snapdragon X50 that was announced back in 2017. "Headline features of this new chip include multi-mode 4G and 5G in a single chip, blazing fast 7Gbps speeds, and futureproof support for the 5G Standalone specification," reports Android Authority. From the report: Starting with 5G, the chip supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz spectrum, just like its predecessor. Theoretical peak speeds are boosted from 5Gbps to 7Gbps download and up to 3Gbps upload. However, you'll need a perfect alignment of network conditions and capabilities to reach such lofty speeds. More important is the introduction of 5G FDD support. This will be crucial in Europe and other places looking to free up low-frequency spectrum (600 to 900MHz) for 5G. The Snapdragon X55 also introduces 4G/5G spectrum sharing, 100MHz envelope tracking for better power management, and antenna tuning in the sub-6GHz region. All very handy improvements over its first generation 5G modem.

Perhaps the biggest point of all is that the X55 also supports the 5G Standalone (SA) specification. First-generation 5G networks and devices are all based on the earlier Non-Standalone (NSA) specification. Eventually, these will transition over to the SA standard. SA ditches the use of LTE networks for backend communication, transitioning over entirely to 5G. This opens up greater networking flexibility with Network Slicing and offers even lower latency for IoT and device-to-device communication. On the 4G side, the Snapdragon X55 supports the Category 22 LTE standard. This allows for peak throughput of 2.5Gbps, making it Qualcomm's most powerful 4G solution to date. The Snapdragon X55 also introduces Full Dimensional MIMO (FD-MIMO) for LTE. This includes 3D beamforming, allowing for improved elevation support to improve spectrum efficiency. Importantly, the Snapdragon X55 is built on a 7nm process rather than 10nm with the X50. The new modem isn't expected to appear in devices until late 2019 at the earliest. Android Authority suggests that the X55 will be featured inside 2019's next-gen Snapdragon 8XX processor, which should be officially announced at the end of the year, close to when Qualcomm expects the first X55 products.

"In addition to the new modem, Qualcomm also announced its second-generation mmWave antenna and will be demoing its 5G technologies at MWC," reports Android Authority. "Dubbed the QTM525, the latest antenna module is slightly slimmer than the previous design and can be built into phones thinner than 8mm thick. It now covers 26, 28, and 39GHz mmWave spectrum and Qualcomm continues to suggest that three or four of these will be needed per 5G phone."

A comprehensive multi-year study by the non-profit Epicenter.works, comparing the 30 member countries of the European Union (EU) on net neutrality enforcement, has found that zero rating business practices by wireless carriers have increased the cost of wireless data compared to countries without zero rating. From a report: This directly contradicts all of the assertions by major wireless carriers that their zero rating practices are "free data" for consumers. Based on the evidence, zero rating not only serves as a means to enhance ISPs' power over the Internet, but it's also how they charge consumers more money for wireless service. Zero rating was originally going to be banned by the FCC under the General Conduct Rule, but when the FCC changed leadership the agency promptly green lighted and encouraged the industry to engage in zero rating practices before it began its repeal of net neutrality.

Trailrunner7 shares a report from Duo Security: From the beginning, Twitter's creators made the decision not to require real names on the service. It's a policy that's descended from older chat services, message boards and Usenet newsgroups and was designed to allow users to express themselves freely. Free expression is certainly one of the things that happens on Twitter, but that policy has had a number of unintended consequences, too. The service is flooded with bots, automated accounts that are deployed by a number of different types of users, some legitimate, others not so much. Many companies and organizations use automation in their Twitter accounts, especially for customer service. But a wide variety of malicious actors use bots, too, for a lot of different purposes. Governments have used bots to spread disinformation for influence campaigns, cybercrime groups employ bots as part of the command-and-control infrastructure for botnets, and bots are an integral part of the cryptocurrency scam ecosystem. This has been a problem for years on Twitter, but only became a national and international issue after the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said this week that he sees potential in biometric authentication as a way to help combat manipulation and increase trust on the platform. "If we can utilize technologies like Face ID or Touch ID or some of the biometric things that we find on our devices today to verify that this is a real person, then we can start labeling that and give people more context for what they're interacting with and ideally that adds some more credibility to the equation. It is something we need to fix. We haven't had strong technology solutions in the past, but that's definitely changing with these supercomputers we have in our pockets now," Dorsey said. Jordan Wright, an R&D engineer at Duo Labs writes: "I think it's a step in the right direction in terms of making general authentication usable, depending on how it's implemented. But I'm not sure how much it will help the bot/automation issue. There will almost certainly need to be a fallback authentication method for users without an iOS device. Bot owners who want to do standard authentication will use whichever method is easiest for them, so if a password-based flow is still offered, they'd likely default to that."

"The fallback is the tricky bit. If one exists, then Touch ID/Face ID might be helpful in identifying that there is a human behind an account, but not necessarily the reverse -- that a given account is not human because it doesn't use Touch ID," Wright adds.

Apple is planning to release three new iPhone models this year, including a device to succeed the newly-created XR model, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. From a report: Apple will unveil direct successors to last year's iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The iPhone XR, which is believed to have been the least popular of the three, will be updated with a model that comes with the same LCD display and similar design, according to the report. Apple is also considering adding a triple-lens camera system to one of the 2019 models in a bid to compete with Samsung and others that are readying similar camera systems, the Journal's sources said.

Growing smartphone and internet penetration across many African countries saw global streaming companies make a deeper play for audiences here this year. From a report: Netflix signaled its interest in Africa by hiring a content producer for the region and took on the MultiChoice, the continental satellite TV giant owned by Naspers, Africa's most valuable company. The Los Gatos, California company spooked MultiChoice with everything from trolling online ads to billboards placed conspicuously close to their Johannesburg headquarters. MultiChoice has clearly taken notice and has called for Netflix to be regulated. No African regulator has shown the appetite to rein Netflix in, though. Indeed, Netflix has bolstered its library of African content with a first original movie from Nigeria's Nollywood movie industry and committed to producing its first original African series.

[...] Altogether, there's clearly a growing market as content consumption habits evolve among Africa's youth -- a majority of the continent's population. For example, Nigerians are already consuming more video on mobile devices than on television. Platforms like Tv2Go, which launched in South Africa in November, are experimenting with free mobile platforms, but may find that increasingly discerning streaming audiences need binge-worthy content to attract them.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new neurostimulator that can listen to and stimulate electric current in the brain at the same time, potentially delivering fine-tuned treatments for patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson's. Science Daily reports: The device, named the WAND, works like a "pacemaker for the brain," monitoring the brain's electrical activity and delivering electrical stimulation if it detects something amiss. These devices can be extremely effective at preventing debilitating tremors or seizures in patients with a variety of neurological conditions. But the electrical signatures that precede a seizure or tremor can be extremely subtle, and the frequency and strength of electrical stimulation required to prevent them is equally touchy. It can take years of small adjustments by doctors before the devices provide optimal treatment.

WAND, which stands for wireless artifact-free neuromodulation device, is both wireless and autonomous, meaning that once it learns to recognize the signs of tremor or seizure, it can adjust the stimulation parameters on its own to prevent the unwanted movements. And because it is closed-loop -- meaning it can stimulate and record simultaneously -- it can adjust these parameters in real-time. WAND can record electrical activity over 128 channels, or from 128 points in the brain, compared to eight channels in other closed-loop systems. To demonstrate the device, the team used WAND to recognize and delay specific arm movements in rhesus macaques. The device is described in a study that appeared in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today thanked Congress for preventing the U.S. government from enforcing net neutrality rules. "The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules, but the repeal could have been reversed by Congress if it acted before the end of its session," reports Ars Technica. "Democrats won a vote to reverse the repeal in the Senate but weren't able to get enough votes in the House of Representatives before time ran out." From the report: "I'm pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation," Pai said in a statement marking the deadline passage today. Pai claimed that broadband speed improvements and new fiber deployments in 2018 occurred because of his net neutrality repeal -- although speeds and fiber deployment also went in the right direction while net neutrality rules were in place. "Over the past year, the Internet has remained free and open," Pai said, adding that "the FCC's light-touch approach is working." Pai didn't mention a recent case in which CenturyLink temporarily blocked its customers' Internet access in order to show an ad or a recent research report accusing Sprint of throttling Skype (which Sprint denies).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The year was 2010 and the future of mobile computing was looking bright. The iPhone was barely three years old, Google's Android had yet to swallow the smartphone market whole, and half a dozen alternative mobile operating systems -- many of which were devoutly open source -- were preparing for launch. Eight years on, you probably haven't even heard of most of these alternative mobile operating systems, much less use them. Today, Android and iOS dominate the global smartphone market and account for 99.9 percent of mobile operating systems. Even Microsoft and Blackberry, longtime players in the mobile space with massive revenue streams, have all but left the space. Then there's Jolla, the small Finnish tech company behind Sailfish OS, which it bills as the "last independent alternative mobile operating system." Jolla has had to walk itself back from the edge of destruction several times over the course of its seven year existence, and each time it has emerged battered, but more determined than ever to carve out a spot in the world for a truly independent, open source mobile operating system.

Jolla's Sailfish OS rose from the ashes of Nokia and Intel's ill-fated collaboration, MeeGo. The MeeGo project launched in 2010 in an attempt to merge Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS and Nokia's Maemo software platform into a single open-source mobile operating system that could take on Google. By 2011, Android had already surpassed Nokia in the smartphone market, a fact that wasn't lost on Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, who in a memo described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Nokia only ever released one phone running MeeGo: the Nokia N9, which ended up being well received despite its limited release. But it was too little, too late. By 2011, Nokia was bleeding talent and it was clear that MeeGo wasn't going to keep the company competitive in the rapidly changing smartphone market. In a last-ditch effort, Nokia struck a partnership with Microsoft to provide the hardware for its next generation of Windows Phones, abandoning MeeGo entirely. The same couldn't be said for those developers who had worked on MeeGo and, before that, an open source mobile OS called Mer, based on Intel's Maemo system. In October 2011, three developers that had worked on Mer sent a message on a mailing list calling for the creation of a "MeeGo 2.0." At the same time, developer Sami Pienimaki and two others left Nokia to found their own company, which would use this new version of MeeGo as the basis for an open source mobile OS. And thus, Sailfish was born. In a cheeky homage to the "burning platform" memo, Pienimaki and his fellow defectors decided to name their company Jolla, a Finnish word connoting a small boat or life raft. Jolla has since turned to Russia and China, both of which were hungry for a secure alternative to Google-based systems. In late 2016, Sailfish OS achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate us. Around the same time, Sailfish was also making moves in China. In early 2017, the Sailfish China Consortium gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese OS based on Sailfish.

Starbucks announced that it will start blocking pornography viewing on its stores' Wi-Fi starting in 2019. "A Starbucks representative told NBC News that the viewing of 'egregious content' over its stores' Wi-Fi has always violated its policy, but the company now has a way to stop it," reports NBC News. From the report: "We have identified a solution to prevent this content from being viewed within our stores and we will begin introducing it to our U.S. locations in 2019," the company representative said. The announcement was first reported by Business Insider and comes after a petition from internet-safety advocacy group Enough is Enough garnered more than 26,000 signatures. The nonprofit launched a porn-free campaign aimed at McDonald's and Starbucks in 2014, and it says that while McDonald's "responded rapidly and positively," Starbucks did not.

In a letter that [Enough is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes] said she received from Starbucks over the summer, the company vowed to address the issue "once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content." Starbucks has not released details about how it plans to restrict the viewing of pornographic sites or illegal content over its Wi-Fi. In response, the vice president of YouPorn responded by sending a memo to staff banning Starbucks products from company offices starting Jan. 1, 2019.

Forget the old American campaign slogan of a chicken in every pot, or the Indian politician's common pledge to put rice in every bowl. The New York Times reports: Here in the state of Chhattisgarh, the chief minister, Raman Singh, has promised a smartphone in every home -- and he is using the government-issued devices to reach voters as he campaigns in legislative elections that conclude on Tuesday. [...] The phones are the latest twist in digital campaigning by the B.J.P., which controls the national and state government and is deft at using tools like WhatsApp groups and Facebook posts to influence voters. The B.J.P. government in Rajasthan, which holds state elections next month, is also subsidizing phones and data plans for residents, and party leaders are considering extending the model to other states.

Chhattisgarh's $71 million free-phone program -- known by the acronym SKY after its name in Hindi -- is supposed to bridge the digital divide in this state of 26 million people, which is covered by large patches of forest and counts 7,000 villages that do not even have a wireless data signal. The plan is to add hundreds of cellphone towers and give a basic smartphone to every college student and one woman in every household to connect more families to the internet and help fulfill the central government's goal of a "Digital India." But this election season, many of the 2.9 million people who have received the phones have found themselves targeted by the B.J.P.

A new study has found that more than half of the top free mobile VPN returned by Play Store and App Store searches are from developers based in China or with Chinese ownership, raising serious concerns about data privacy. "Our investigation uncovered that over half of the top free VPN apps either had Chinese ownership or were actually based in China, which has aggressively clamped down on VPN services over the past year and maintains an iron grip on the internet within its borders," said Simon Migliano, Head of Research at Metric Labs, a company that runs the Top10VPN portal. ZDNet reports: The researcher says he analyzed the top 20 free VPN apps that appear in searches for VPN apps on the Google and Apple mobile app stores, for both the US and UK locales. He says that 17 of the 30 apps he analyzed (10 apps appeared on both stores) had formal links to China, either being a legally registered Chinese entity or by having Chinese ownership, based on business registration and shareholder information Migliano shared with ZDNet.

The expert says that 86 percent of the apps he analyzed had "unacceptable privacy policies." For example, some apps didn't say if they logged traffic, some apps appeared to use generic privacy policies that didn't even mention the term VPN, while some apps didn't feature a privacy policy at all. On top of this, other apps admitted in their policies to sharing data with third-parties, tracking users, and sending and sharing data with Chinese third-parties. Almost half of the free VPN apps also appeared to take the privacy policy as a joke, with some hosting the policy as a plain text file on Pastebin, AWS servers, or raw IP addresses, with no domain name. In addition, 64 percent of the apps also didn't bother setting up a dedicated website for their VPN service, operating strictly from the Play Store.