Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer who started his career on PC World and has written for dozens of computer and technology magazines, as well as numerous national newspapers, business and in-flight magazines. He has also written two novels.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride, and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
After Apple forced Facebook to pull Onavo Protect from the iOS App Store, and to cease using Facebook Research, the social network seems to be finally taking the hint about its spyware …
In an effort to protect the US midterm elections from foreign interference, Twitter introduced tools designed to provide transparency into political ads on the platform. The company has today rolled out those same Twitter political ad tools in Europe …
There was a court case just over a year ago where a judge ruled that a series of texted emoji constituted a valid agreement to rent an apartment. A law professor has found that it was far from alone: there were over 50 court cases last year where a judge needed to interpret the meaning of emoji or emoticons …
The British parliament has said that tech giants can’t be trusted to do the right thing, and need to be regulated.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said there are three areas in which legislation is needed …
Samsung has announced plans to open three US retail stores, in New York, Los Angeles and Houston.
From the company’s description, it sounds like Samsung has modelled them on Apple Stores …
There is now some uncertainty about the future of Google News in Europe after the European Union finalized its controversial new copyright legislation.
Google had previously showed how dramatically its search results could be affected, and warned that it may shut down the service in Europe …
Stolen account details from 16 hacked websites have gone on sale on the dark web. In all, 617 million records are available, with data including account holder names, email addresses and hashed passwords …
Facebook may in future have you ask for your permission to combine what it knows about you from WhatsApp, Instagram and third-party websites.
The potential restriction is at an early stage at present …
GDPR regulations give European citizens a legal right to see all the personal data held on them, among other rights. But a tech writer requesting data from Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google found that the data isn’t as easy to understand as it should be …
Fake Twitter accounts can range from mildly annoying through to fraudulent, and the company is testing a new ‘original tweeter’ feature designed to help you identify genuine accounts from copycats …
Sharing your Wi-Fi connection with visitors got much easier as of iOS 11, thanks to a pop-up asking you if you’d like to allow a visiting iOS device to join. But a new gadget makes the process even easier, and works for Android phones too …
The OPEN Government Data Act means that all public data made available by the US government must be in a format accessible by smartphones, tablets and computers …
Google has won an interim victory in the final phase of the long-running ‘right to be forgotten‘ case, indicating that it may not need to censor search results outside EU countries.
The European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled back in 2014 that individuals have a right to require Google to remove sensitive information from search results. It provided a so-called ‘right to be forgotten’ in the case of information relating to private individuals where there is no legitimate public interest in the facts being known …
Apple shocked the market last week when it advised that it was going to miss its calendar Q4 (fiscal Q1) guidance by anywhere from $5B to $9B. Samsung is today likely to cause similar waves after issuing Q4 guidance for a dramatic drop in revenue, and profits well below market expectations …
The #deletefacebook tag may have been trending in the light of various privacy concerns, but the evidence is that Facebook addiction is stronger than some like to admit. Back in September of last year, some 26% of Facebook users polled claimed to have deleted the app from their phones – but analytics data showed otherwise …
A study of 34 of the most popular Android apps found that at least 20 of them are sending user data to Facebook without consent.
The data transmitted ranges from the innocuous to the sensitive – such as whether the user has children – and is likely to be illegal in the case of European citizens …
President Trump is reported to be considering declaring a ‘national emergency’ that would see US companies banned from purchasing and using telecommunications equipment made by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE.
An earlier ban prohibits government use of technology made by the two companies, extending to contractors working for the US government, but the new legislation would apply to all US companies …
There have been a number of amusing cases where Android smartphone makers or their brand ambassadors have tweeted using Twitter for iPhone, but the official Apple Music account has now managed to do the opposite: tweet from an Android device …
A report prepared for the Senate on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election says that the way in which Google complied with requests for information made it harder to analyze the role played by YouTube …
California is considering introducing a tax on text messages. The reason? Because nobody makes phone calls any more …
Analysis of more than 115M Internet speed tests reveals that Irvine, California, has the best broadband in the country, with an average download speed of 124Mbps and an upload speed of 52Mbps …
A lengthy NY Times feature provides some stark illustrations of the extent to which potentially-identifiable location data is being captured, shared and retained by both iOS and Android apps, threatening user privacy.
The paper was able to identify specific individuals from some location patterns, and found that one iOS app was passing exact location data to a total of 40 different companies …
Instagram Close Friends is a new feature that allows users to share their more personal Stories with just a select few friends. The feature has been in testing for almost 18 months, and is rolling out to everyone worldwide today on iOS and Android.
The company appears to be responding to the ‘Finstagram’ trend among teenage users …
Google is facing legal action in Europe as well as the US for allegedly tracking the locations of phones without the full consent of their owners …
