• DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      10 months ago

      A Chinese state-backed institution has devised a way to identify users who send messages via Apple Inc.’s popular AirDrop feature, Beijing’s government claims, as part of broader efforts to root out undesirable content.

      The Beijing institute developed the technique to crack an iPhone’s encrypted device log to identify the numbers and emails of senders who share AirDrop content, the city’s judicial bureau said in an online post. Police have identified multiple suspects via that method, the agency said, without disclosing if anyone was arrested.

      “It improves the efficiency and accuracy of case-solving and prevents the spread of inappropriate remarks as well as potential bad influences,” the bureau said.

      The declaration again drew attention to an iPhone feature that activists around the world have employed to spread their message. Requiring just a nearby bluetooth connection, it was widely used by protesters to share pro-democracy slogans during 2019 protests in Hong Kong. An Apple representative didn’t respond to requests for comment.

      Hailed by the article as a “technological breakthrough,” the method could supplement measures intended to eradicate information China deems unhealthy. It also adds more uncertainty to Apple’s operations in a country where it already grapples with severe constraints on content, including on Apple TV and Books.

      AirDrop allows the quick exchange of files like images, documents or videos between Apple devices. The company has limited the feature on Chinese iPhones since 2022, after the service was used by protesters to spread images to fellow device owners.

      The American electronics leader also faces mounting sales pressure, after a growing number of state-backed agencies banned the use of foreign devices at work.

      https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        archive.today and all its subsidiaries are hit and miss for me. They poison DNS and half my devices won’t load their pages.

        • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          How odd, I’ve never had an issue with them across multiple devices and ISP’s. Have you had issues accessing them outside your home network and/or through a vpn?

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            On my phone it usually works, so long as I have Private DNS settings off, even through my home network using my router’s DNS settings. If I turn on the Private DNS on my phone it won’t load.

            On my PC’s it’s blocked every time at home. This is using my router’s DNS, I don’t have it configured locally, so if I hop onto a WiFi with standard DNS it should work.

            When I looked into it before I found a reddit post that mentioned it was because they actively sabotage DNS queries from Cloudflare and Quad9. Someone made a workaround but I CBA doing that, I prefer his middle finger solution (advocating for archive.org instead). https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/118haqg/archiveph_webpage_archive_as_site_is/

              • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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                10 months ago

                Archive.org is the OG, run by Internet Archives. However the downside is that you can’t just make up a link - with archive.is you can just append the URL you want and it will work (eventually, once it’s actually done its archiving) but with archive.org you have to actually go to the site and paste the URL, then you’ll see all the snapshots it has and each link has the date and time of the snapshot.

                If archive.org could do something to make it easier to make links that would be perfect.

  • lnxtx@feddit.nl
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    10 months ago

    I don’t use Apple. How difficult is it to turn off “AirDrop” or limit it to a trusted source?