G2A will soon require sellers to reveal their name and address

Despite previous claims that the company was out of the key selling business, G2A, the popular but highly controversial game key reselling marketplace, is back with a vengeance, and it's shaking things up for key sellers.
Starting July 1st, the company plans to require all sellers to reveal their full names and addresses to buyers, a decision that the company hopes will make their platform more straightforward and accessible to potential customers. In a comment to PCGamesN, G2A explained their reasoning behind this choice: “by providing more information to buyers and making the process of buying and selling more clear-cut, we are making G2A a better place for our customers." Up until now, sellers have been able to operate with total anonymity, preventing buyers from holding them accountable when sold a fraudulently-obtained game key.
As long as there is some sort of verification system in place to ensure users don't end up buying keys from hordes of John Smiths, this move seems like a first step in the right direction. Whether or not it will be enough to satisfy the platform's many critics remains to be seen, after all despite G2A's claims that " other changes " are on the way, they have a less than spotless track record.
This move is a clear attempt for G2A to improve their damaged reputation. After developer Gearbox pulled out of a potentially lucrative Bulletstorm: Collector's Edition partnership with them back in April, and Slime Rancher developer Monomi Park more refused to work with them entirely, the company seems to be in damage control mode.
If you're wondering where a seller's information will be displayed, G2A informed Polygon that it would be included on any bills buyers receive, "among other places." It's unclear at this time whether or not buyers will be able to a seller's information prior to making a purchase. G2A seems to be committed to improving their customers' experiences moving forward, but only time will tell if that commitment is genuine.

Amazon's Alexa powered speakers may be coming to India soon

Amazon has built an impressive presence in India since its launch but the one that stuck out like a sore thumb is the absence of the company's Alexa powered speakers in the country. Per new report by Economic times, we may not have to wait for too long. The report mentions that Amazon maybe gearing up to launch its Alexa powered speakers soon in the country. They will come with English command support out of the box, with regional Indian languages like Marathi, Tamil and Hindi coming later.

Economic Times also spoke with a senior executive at Amazon who said that the new speakers will carry an attractive price tag but stopped short of sharing any specific details. Amazon's Alexa speakers allow users to interact with it using natural language and can assist users in up to 1200 skills like booking an Uber or shopping online.

India has largely been absent in the AI home assistant war so far with none of the big three Google, Apple or Amazon bringing their AI products to the country. Amazon may look at this as an opportunity to get a head start and form a sizable user base. In the US, Amazon was largely credited for carrying the torch of the AI revolution by being the first ones out of the gate with the Echo and may have a similar plan in place for India. 

Samsung's Tizen OS Riddled With Security Holes

There are more than three dozen previously unknown flaws that pose a potential threat to consumers using some Samsung TVs, watches and phones, a security researcher reported Monday

Hackers could exploit the vulnerabilities found in Samsung's Tizen operating system to gain remote access and control of a variety of the company's products, Amihai Neiderman, head of research at Equus Software, told Motherboard.

Neiderman presented his findings at a security conference sponsored by Kapersky Lab.

Tizen is running on some 30 million smart TVs, as well as on Samsung's Gear smartwatches and on phones in a limited number of countries, including Russia, India and Bangladesh, according to the Motherboard report.

Samsung plans to have 10 million Tizen phones in the market this year and has announced the OS will be installed on its new line of smart washing machines and refrigerators, it added.

Store App Vulnerable

While all the vulnerabilities in the software allow a hacker to take control of devices running Tizen, a flaw Neiderman found particularly disturbing compromised the software used to install software through the app store for the OS.

Although the TizenStore software authenticates apps before they're installed on a device, Neiderman exploited a vulnerability that let him gain control of apps before they could be authenticated.

Neiderman contacted Samsung months ago about his findings, he told Motherboard, but he received only an automated email message in response.

The company apparently has approached him about his research in recent days, however, and he has shared some information with the firm.

"Samsung Electronics takes security and privacy very seriously. We regularly check our systems and if at any time there is a credible potential vulnerability, we act promptly to investigate and resolve the issue," Samsung said in a statement provided to LinuxInsider by spokesperson Danielle Meister Cohen.

"We continually provide software updates to consumers to safeguard their products," the company maintained. "We are fully committed to cooperating with Mr. Neiderman to mitigate any potential vulnerabilities."

Reinventing the Wheel - Badly

With Tizen, which is an open source operating system based on Linux, Samsung is trying to offer an alternative OS to a market dominated by Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

"It's trying to reinvent the wheel and doing a bad job of it," said Patrick Tiquet, director of security and architecture at Keeper Security.

"It sounds to me, too, that they cheaped out on their software development team," he told LinuxInsider. "You can't do that when you're taking on Google and Android."

Tizen's programming is the worse code Neiderman has ever seen, he told Motherboard, noting there are mistakes in the software similar to those programmers made 20 years ago.

It appears that no one who understands security was involved either in the writing of the code or in reviewing it, he said, resulting in everything going wrong that possibly could go wrong.

Botnet Bonanza

Consumers should be concerned about the vulnerabilities Neiderman discovered in Tizen, maintained James Scott, a senior fellow with the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology.

Previously unknown, or "zero day," flaws are found in all software, he acknowledged.

That said, "consumers should be very concerned by the sheer number of zero day vulnerabilities discoverable by a single researcher," Scott told LinuxInsider. "Other pen testers, researchers or attackers may be able to discover tens or hundreds more exploitable zero day vulnerabilities."

Shipping devices running software that puts consumers at risk violates a tacit agreement between a company and its customers, said Michael Patterson, CEO of Plixer International.

"Technology consumers have an unspoken trust that new technology purchases are shipped from the manufacturer with the latest security features and functionality embedded," he told LinuxInsider.

"If Amihai Neiderman's findings are accurate, it is alarming that Samsung is shipping smart TVs, smartwatches and mobile phones with many serious security flaws," Patterson continued.

"Given that Tizen is currently running on 30 million devices and that Samsung plans to have 10 million Tizen phones this year, the potential for these devices to become members of the next big botnet is very real," he warned.

Eyeballs on Security

One of the pillars of open source software is that the "many eyes" of the community will catch flaws in a project's code. That apparently hasn't been the case with Tizen.

"I haven't seen a lot of interest in Tizen from developers, and it hasn't been widely deployed -- so you don't have the interest in it that you'd see in something like Android," Keeper Security's Tiquet said.

"If there are no eyeballs looking at the source code," he noted, "then you don't have the security or the review that you would have with a more popular open source project."

Tizen's problems are familiar, said Chris Clark, principal security engineer for strategic initiatives at Synopsys.

"When Linux came out, the same comments about 'terrible code,' 'poor security,' and other more colorful explanations flowed freely," he recalled.

"Now that Linux is more mature, these issues are harder to find, although they still exist," Clark told LinuxInsider. "This is not a simple problem. TV manufacturers must focus on testing automation and development methodologies to minimize successful attacks."

Apple Slashes App Store Affiliate Commissions

Apple stunned the wider development community on Monday with an emailed announcement that it has decided to slash commissions for App Store affiliates from 7 percent to 2.5 percent, starting May 1.

The cuts apply to all apps and in-app content, Apple said. However, they do not apply to commissions for movies, music, books and TV, which will remain at 7 percent.

The company will continue to pay commissions on Apple Music memberships as well.

Apple directed affiliates to read the Commissions and Payments page on its Affiliates Resources site for more information on the new policy.


Big Cut, Short Notice

Both the extent of the cuts and the brief notice provided -- they go into effect next week -- are surprising, and have given rise to speculation that the policy change may be part of a larger shift in Apple's recent revenue picture.

"It is interesting that they've kept the 7 percent intact for higher-value digital content," said John Jackson, research vice president at IDC.

"The connection is not terribly clear, but presumably Apple wants to drive more revenue from subscriptions and higher-value content in general, so this may be a move to bias affiliate-driven traffic in those directions," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller last year revealed plans to shift toward a new subscription model for developers. The plan centered around changing the 70/30 revenue share model to favor developers who attracted subscribers. If a customer remained a subscriber for a year, Apple would slash its 30 percent share to 15 percent, thus boosting the developer's take.

It's been rumored that Apple plans to announce the share model change this June at its 28th annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

Apple did not respond to our request to comment for this story.

Digital Content Push

During Apple's fiscal first quarter conference call, executives noted the shift toward services as the core piece of the company's growth. They also noted that the App Store was shattering records.

Year-over-year revenue growth was up 43 percent, and revenue more than doubled that of Google Play during the 2016 calendar year, said Apple CFO Luca Maestri.

"As disappointed as affiliates will be with the news, the move makes sense from Apple's perspective," said Karol Severin, an analyst at Midia Research.

"Apple is managing incentives for affiliates based on what it wants to push," he told the E-Commerce Times.

The affiliate program's initial purpose was to get the App Store off the ground, Severin said, but now it is Apple's best-performing content play.

Developers will not feel any direct impact from the new policy, which does seem driven by the shift toward a subscription model, suggested Jack Kent, director of operators and mobile media at IHS.

"The move will have a much bigger impact on third-party review sites and aggregators that have used the referral program to drive incremental sales," he told the E-Commerce Times. "In the early days of the App Store, these sites would have helped drive traffic, but now the market is more mature, and so these will have less of an impact on the overall app market."

Here's how to use Facebook to find a Wi-Fi connection anywhere

Facebook is rolling out a new feature to help us save on data and locate open Wi-Fi networks, no matter where we are.

It's called Find Wi-Fi, and it shows network-needy users a tailored hotspot map of their immediate area, highlighting locations where they'll be able to find a connection. The feature was tested for iOS in a few countries last year to positive reviews, so Facebook is releasing it to all users around the world on both iPhone and Android.

It's not all wide-open public Wi-Fi — the maps are made up of businesses that have shared with Facebook from their Page — but it'll help you pick out which coffee shop would be best for a pitstop if you're in an unfamiliar place.

                                               

Finding Wi-Fi using the feature is easy, at least if you're in an area surrounded by hot spots. Just head over to the "More" tab's "Explore" section, where you'll see the "Find Wi-Fi" button.


If you haven't already, you'll need to allow the Facebook app to access your location in order to use the feature. Once the map pops up, you'll be able to search the area for the closest connection point.



There is one notable flaw to the feature: You'll need to have some shred of network connection to be able to access a hotspot map. That's fine if you're looking for Wi-Fi to conserve your precious data usage on the go — but if your mobile network is too weak, you might be out of luck.

                                     

Facebook reps told  Find Wi-Fi tested well in places with weak networks, however. The trial found the feature "especially useful in areas with poor mobile network connectivity,” as a way to bolster the connection, they said in an emailed statement.

It's just another step in Facebook's quest to make it possible for everyone — especially its now 2 billion strong user base — to get online. After all, if the social network is really going to bring the world closer together, we'll all have to be able to access digital space.

Finally, a way to turn your smartphone into a universal remote

                                                   

What do your television, air conditioner, cable box, and ceiling fan all have in common? They can soon all be controlled through the smartphone in your pocket.  

The KlikR Universal Remote Control provides a welcome respite from remote mayhem by combining every remote you need into the one device you use every day: Your smartphone.

To downsize your remote collection into one master KlikR setup, attach the coin-sized dongle to any appliance you want to control with the KlikR app. From there, a customizable control panel shows you what’s connected and allows you to sort through at will, and control them with your voice.  

KlikR will also pause or mute any background noise when you receive a phone call, and archive your settings in the event you lose your phone.  

Reinvent your home electronics and appliance setup with KlikR for just $19.99.