The emoji keyboard was first introduced in Japan, but only features two emojis that appear to be Asian: a “man with a turban” and a “man with Gua Pi Mao,” a type of Chinese hat. But the emoji keyboard features more than a dozen faces that look white.
Via Apple iOS7
Emoji characters have been standardized by Unicode Consortium since 2010, so as to appear on all computers and mobile devices the same. Other apps offer emojis, but users risk their friends not being able to see them if they haven’t installed the same software.
But of the more than 800 Emojis, the only two resembling people of color are a guy who looks vaguely Asian and another in a turban. There’s a white boy, girl, man, woman, elderly man, elderly woman, blonde boy, blonde girl and, we’re pretty sure, [video game character] Princess Peach. But when it comes to faces outside of yellow smileys, there’s a staggering lack of minority representation.
This is not the first time people have noted the lack of ethnic emojis, and many have expressed frustration in particular with the fact that there are no black emojis.
Miley Cyrus tweeted in 2012 that emojis needed an ethnic update:
In response to continued concern, MTV Act askedApple CEO Tim Cook directly why there is so little diversity in emojis. On Tuesday, Apple representative Katie Cotton responded that Apple has been working to update the character set.
Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you. Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard.
Despite Apple’s announcement that they are working on an emoji update, there is no release date.
“We’re proud that thousands of our members acted and Apple listened,” said DoSomething.org’s spokeswomen Colleen Wormsley to BuzzFeed. “In August, we urged Apple to include more diversity in the emoji keyboard. Emojis are a huge part of youth culture and everyone should feel valuable and represented.”
Via Apple iOS 7
Apple’s last update in 2012 introduced same-sex couples and families into the emoji keyboard as part of iOS 6.
Via Apple iOS7
Campaigns in the past have tried to add hotdogs, cupcakes, tacos, and other edibles to the keyboard, which does include sushi, fried shrimp, and a bento box, because of its Japanese roots.
Apple has said it wants more ethnic diversity in the basic range of emoji available to text-messaging apps.
It added that it was working the body responsible for deciding the standardised range of graphic symbols that can be added to text messages to achieve this.At present the list of characters contains dozens of faces of people that appear to be white.However, only two of the symbols seem to be Asian and none are black.Since 2010 a basic list has been developed and maintained by the Unicode Consortium - a Silicon Valley-based non-profit organisation made up of major computer firms, software producers, user groups and others.It does this to ensure that different devices and mobile carriers can share a basic set.
Although some apps offer to boost the number of emoji that a user can send and receive, users risk their friends being unable to view them if they haven't installed the same software.Despite the fact that emoji first became popular in Japan, Unicode's current list only features two Asian people - a "man with a turban" and a "man with Gua Pi Mao", a type of Chinese hat - although it does include a Japanese ogre and Japanese dolls. Diversity petition
Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech firms design their own versions of how the more than 800 basic emoji characters appear, but they tend to interpret most of the reference list's human characters as being Caucasian. "Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms," Katie Cotton, Apple's vice-president of worldwide corporate communications, told MTV.
A petition suggested that emoji like these could be added to Apple's keyboard
"There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard."The broadcaster approached the company after a petition was posted to DoSomething.org calling on Apple to increase the ethnic diversity found within its emoji keyboard."There's a white boy, girl, man, woman, elderly man, elderly woman, blonde boy, blonde girl and, we're pretty sure, [video game character] Princess Peach," it said.v"But when it comes to faces outside of yellow smileys, there's a staggering lack of minority representation."
It added that the keyboard already offered a graphic showing a same-sex couple, and called on the company to present people with a wider range of skin tones.
'Expressive power'
Bernie Hogan is studying the use of emoji as part of his research into how people represent themselves on the net.The Oxford University research fellow said it sounded like a trivial problem but many smart device owners had become reliant on the tool ."Emoji exist first and foremost as a way to augment texts with clear expressive power," he told the BBC.
"If they restrict the sort of people who are used in the images it restricts users' expressive power - people won't feel that the emoji speak for them." There are calls to widen Unicode's list even further.
The Wall Street Journal has reported on campaigns to include hotdogs, cupcakes, bacon and tacos to the list, which currently includes sushi, fried shrimp and a bento box as a result of it Japanese origins.
However, Mr Hogan warns there are dangers with expanding it too far."There will always be more potential icons than you can reasonably put in a system," he said."It can't realistically be the responsibility of any particular organisation or consortium to be able to provide all possible icons in a usable format."But that being said, in terms of racial diversity it's very fair to think the range should be extended."
An Alaskan airport has closed an aircraft access route because of a flaw with Apple's Maps app.
Fairbanks International Airport told a local newspaper that in the past three weeks two motorists had driven along the taxiway and across one of its runways.
Apple's app directs users along the taxiway but does not specifically tell them to drive on to the runway.
A spokesman for Apple was unable to provide comment.
The airport said it had complained to the phone-maker through the local attorney general's office.
"We asked them to disable the map for Fairbanks until they could correct it, thinking it would be better to have nothing show up than to take the chance that one more person would do this," Melissa Osborn, chief of operations at the airport, told the Alaska Dispatch newspaper.
She added that barricades had since been erected to block access to the final stretch of the taxiway and that they would not be removed until Apple had updated its directions.
The airport said it had been told the problem would be fixed by Wednesday.
However the BBC still experienced the issue when it tested the app, asking for directions to the site from a property to the east of the airport.
By contrast the Google Maps app provided a different, longer route which takes drivers to the property's car park. Warnings ignored
Apple faced criticism after it ditched Google's service as its default maps option last year.
Complaints of inaccuracies followed, including placing Dublin Airport about 17km (11 miles) away from its true location after apparently confusing the site with a farm named Airfield.
The Australian police went so far as to warn that Apple's software was "life threatening" after motorists became stranded in a national park after being given the wrong directions to the city of Mildura, Victoria.
Chief executive Tim Cook posted a letter to the firm's website apologising for the "frustration" caused and promised "we are doing everything we can to make Maps better".
The company has since taken over several other mapping software developers including Locationary, Hopstop and Embark.
Reviews of its latest operating system, iOS 7, noted that its Maps product had improved, with the Guardian newspaper reporting that Apple's "POI (points of interest) database is getting better".
However, the latest mishap indicates problems remain.
Fairbanks Airport said the drivers involved in the 6 September and 20 September incidents had both been from out of town and had ignored signposts warning them that they should not be driving along the taxiway.
"They must have been persistent," the airport's assistant manager Angie Spear told the BBC.
"They had to enter the airport property via a motion-activated gate, and afterwards there are many signs, lights and painted markings, first warning that aircraft may share the road and then that drivers should not be there at all.
"They needed to drive over a mile with all this before reaching the runway. But the drivers disregarded all that because they were following the directions given on their iPhones."
The runway the motorists crossed was used by 737 jets among other aircraft. No one was injured.
"All these types of mapping software have flaws but the problem for Apple is that because it's such a high-profile brand, it gets a lot of attention," said Neil McCartney from the McCartney Media and Telecoms consultancy.
"It's very important for a company in that sort of situation to acknowledge a problem when it is reported and then put it right as fast as possible."
Nick Dillon, senior device analyst at research house Ovum, added that Fairbanks Airport's complaint illustrated how hard the mapping business was to get right.
"With Apple Maps the firm has made a rare misstep by releasing a product which has not lived up to its own high standards.
"Apple evidently did not fully grasp the complexity involved in deploying a mapping service and its continuing woes show that it is not an easy thing to fix."
They’re taking a byte out of crime … some of it, anyway.
To combat a surge in smartphone theft, the NYPD has launched a campaign to advise consumers about the security benefits of updating to Apple's latest -- but neglected to promote a similar feature Google launched on Android one month earlier.
“Attention Apple Users!!!!” reads a flyer cops began handing out Friday, the same day Apple started selling the new iPhone 5S and 5C. “The new iOS7 software update avaialble [sic] for your Apple product brings added security to your devices.”
“For additional information on iOS7 features visit www.apple.com,” the flyer helpfully suggests.
Apple’s smartphone competitors including Microsoft, Google and Motorola declined FoxNews.com requests to comment on the program. But a Google source did note Android's similar feature, which is available for all users running version 2.2 and above -- that’s 100 percent of Android-based devices now on sale.
“If your phone can’t be recovered, or has been stolen, you can quickly and securely erase all of the data on your device to keep your data from ending up in the wrong hands,” wrote Adrian Ludwig, an Android security engineer with Google, when he announced the feature in early August.
The Activation Lock feature in Apple’s iOS7 makes it impossible for a thief to deactivate the "Find My iPhone" or "Find my iPad" feature without the owner's Apple ID and password. Similarly, Google’s Android Device Manager can remotely locate a lost device and can lock and erase it.
The feature is easily set up from android.com/devicemanager. The police did not advertise its launch, however.
NYPD officials said that the Apple feature may help prevent theft.
“Members of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau set up information tables at Apple and Best Buy stores in all five boroughs,” sergeant Brendan Ryan told FoxNews.com. “Police suggested iPhone owners download iOS7, which has an upgraded ‘Find My iPhone’ program that makes it more difficult for thieves to turn off the security settings.”
Between May and Sept. 15, there have been at least 114 incidents in which patrol officers either using their own iPhones or iPhones allocated by the NYPD recovered stolen property using the Find My iPhone feature. This led to 159 arrests and 109 recovered iPhones, iPads, Macbooks and iPod, Ryan said.
It took only days for the hackers of Germany’s Chaos Computer Club to claim victory in the challenge to break Apple’s vaunted new security feature in the iPhone 5s. The CCC “biometrics hacking team” used a photo of a fingerprint from a glass surface to fashion a fake finger that they then used to fool the newest iPhone into unlocking. “This demonstrates – again,” the group said in a statement, “that fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as access control method and should be avoided.”
Actually, it demonstrates no such thing.
The new iPhone debuted on Friday, September 20. The CCC team announced their successful hack roughly 48 hours later. But if you think this is a crushing defeat for Apple, think again. Apple's technology is good enough for most common applications. But no fingerprint reader is unhackable.
Despite the slightly high-end lab equipment, this isn’t exactly rocket science. The source fingerprint probably looked like this:Biometric information like fingerprints and retina scans are useful pieces of a multi-factor authentication puzzle. Although the CCC claims they used “materials that can be found in almost every household,” it’s unlikely that many households have the imaging technology to capture a fingerprint in a 2400 dpi photograph, clean up the resulting image and print it at 1200 dpi “onto transparent sheet with a thick toner setting,” and then “smear pink latex milk or white woodglue” into the pattern to make a fake finger like the one that successfully bypassed the security of Touch ID.
And the lab bench where the fake finger was created probably looked something like this:
Cool, huh? Except those pictures aren't from the CCC. They're from a similar hack that was publicized more than a decade ago. Back in 2003, another group led by researchers Antti Kaseva and Antti Stén posted an almost identical description of a fingerprint hack using a Windows-based fingerprint scanner that was, at the time, state of the art:
The hack is to create an artificial finger using a mold that is manufactured from a latent fingerprint left by the legitimate user. The fingerprint can be obtained from just about anywhere, mug, door handle, rail etc. With this artificial finger the hacker should be able to intrude a system if the mandatory smart card required for logon is available and in use.
And they demonstrated that they could do exactly that. In 2003. The only difference between that hack from a decade ago and the one from this weekend is the resolution of the captured fingerprint.
As usual, Apple has managed to blur the thin line between technical reality and marketing claims. Apple’s support document, “iPhone 5s: About Touch ID security,” is practically oozing with buzzwords and marketing-speak:
The technology within Touch ID is some of the most advanced hardware and software we've put in any device. To fit within the Home button, the Touch ID sensor is only 170 microns thin, not much thicker than a human hair. This high-resolution 500 ppi sensor can read extremely fine details of your fingerprint. The button itself is made from sapphire crystal—one of the clearest, hardest materials available. This protects the sensor and acts as a lens to precisely focus it on your finger. The steel ring surrounding the button detects your finger and tells Touch ID to start reading your fingerprint. The sensor uses advanced capacitive touch to take a high-resolution image from small sections of your fingerprint from the subepidermal layers of your skin. Touch ID then intelligently analyzes this information with a remarkable degree of detail and precision. … Touch ID uses all of this to provide an accurate match and a very high level of security.
The article goes on to note that the odds of a random stranger’s fingerprint matching yours is in the neighborhood of 1 in 50,000, which is “much better than the 1 in 10,000 odds of guessing a typical 4-digit passcode.”
The underlying technology in the iPhone 5s was undoubtedly influenced, if not outright authored, by Authentec, a pioneer in fingerprint and NFC technology, which Apple acquired for a reported $365 million a little over a year ago. Authentec's technology has been part of the PC landscape for years, mostly on enterprise-class notebook PCs.Unless they've captured a 2400 dpi image of your fingerprint, in which case the odds improve dramatically.
And the company wasn’t shy about tooting its own horn in regard to its technical chops. This claim, for example, is on an archived “Technology” page from the now-shuttered Authentec website:
Anti-Spoofing
AuthenTec's anti-spoofing technology dynamically measures the properties of finger skin placed on the sensor while the finger is being scanned. This patented technology ensures that only real fingerprints are read by converting the properties of the skin into digital data which are delivered to the host computer for analysis. AuthenTec anti-spoofing technology then compares the data with expected properties to ensure fingerprint authentication. [emphasis added]
Oops.
Oddly, the current version of the Authentec.com website does not mention the company’s acquisition by Apple. If you visit the site looking for updated Windows drivers or software, you’re redirected to a support page that cryptically notes: “AuthenTec was acquired in October 2012 and the new owner has discontinued the products and services supported on this site.”
“The new owner,” of course, is Apple. But that name doesn’t appear anywhere on the authentec.com domain, which has been scrubbed of most of its PC-era content.
The real lesson in all of this isn’t that fingerprints are untrustworthy. In fact, the opposite is true. For everyday use, a fingerprint is far more secure than a four-digit passcode.
Windows 8.1, which was released to manufacturing a month before iOS 7 but won’t hit shelves until October, has similar technology. A fingerprint identification framework designed for use with the same type of reader as is found in the new iPhone (a big improvement over older swipe-based fingerprint readers) is built into Windows 8.1. It can be combined with the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in a Windows 8.1 device to create a virtual smartcard that makes spoofing of enterprise network credentials very difficult.If your data is valuable enough for an attacker to go to the trouble of stealing a super-high-resolution photo of your fingerprint and molding a fake finger, you probably should be using multi-factor authentication. And in fact the iPhone already does that. Your fingerprint enrollment information is stored in a secure area in the A7 processor that powers the iPhone 5s. If someone manages to steal your fingerprint, they also need to steal your phone. That fake finger by itself won’t work with another iPhone unless you also have your Apple account credentials.
In its part-marketing/part-technical document, Apple says it's come up with a solution that offers the same secure storage of biometric data, without any of the standards support that TPM includes:
iPhone 5s also includes a new advanced security architecture called the Secure Enclave within the A7 chip, which was developed to protect passcode and fingerprint data. Fingerprint data is encrypted and protected with a key available only to the Secure Enclave. Fingerprint data is used only by the Secure Enclave to verify that your fingerprint matches the enrolled fingerprint data. The Secure Enclave is walled off from the rest of A7 and as well as the rest of iOS. Therefore, your fingerprint data is never accessed by iOS or other apps, never stored on Apple servers, and never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else. Only Touch ID uses it and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.
Regardless of the platform you’re using, high-value data should never be secured by a single factor. You’re in pretty good shape if you insist on a successful fingerprint identification combined with a strong passcode (more than a simple four digits) and a device that’s been registered with the network. If you’re a thief and you can successfully combine all those factors, congratulations. You should be in a John Le Carré novel.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth, your fingerprint is a convenient way to protect the garden-variety secrets and shopping we all keep. Combine it with a reasonably strong passcode and you should be perfectly safe. Unless you’re also a character in a spy novel.
