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Instagram: Please Give Us Your Government ID

Andrew Orr ·

Instagram will start asking “suspicious accounts” to verify their identity with a government ID. Instagram claims this will help users understand when accounts are “attempting to mislead their followers” although it’s not clear what kind of behavior the Facebook-owned company thinks is suspicious. One reason is shared: If most of your followers are in a different country than you.

IDs will be stored securely and deleted within 30 days once our review is completed, and won’t be shared on the person’s profile as pseudonymity is still an important part of Instagram.

Podcast

Tidbits Managing Editor Josh Centers (#7) - BGM Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Josh Centers is the managing editor of TidBITS, as well as the author of many Take Control Books: Notes, Home Automation, Apple TV, co-author of Take Control of Preview. He also published Take Control of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13. And he’s recently joined The Prepared as an editor.

In his seventh appearance on the show, Josh explored the new faetures of iOS 14 and what he likes most—as he prepares for his forthcoming Take Control book. The App Libraries feature was at the top of his list. In segment two, Josh and I discussed a major, impressive research article he recently wrote about the often contentious relationship between developers and Apple and its handling of the App Store. We finished with thoughts on a next gen Apple TV 4K.

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iPhone Production Begins in India

Charlotte Henry ·

Indian iPhone production has begun with Wistron looking to hire 10,000 staff, as Apple looks to reduce its reliance on Chinese manufacturing. 9to5 Mac has a nice roundup of the current situation.

India’s importance to Apple as a manufacturing center has grown considerably since the first Foxconn plant back in 2016. The goal at that stage was simply to make older and lower-end iPhone models for local sale. Apple’s primary production capabilities remained firmly centered in China. Things have changed rather dramatically since then. Apple’s increasingly uneasy relationship with China has highlighted the risks of being overly dependent on a single country for the vast majority of production. The substantial tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese-manufactured products made diversification of manufacturing a much more urgent matter. Apple reportedly responded by asking suppliers to price up the cost of moving 15-30% of production out of China. That seemed an ambitious goal at the time, with one reported failed attempt to manufacture the current flagship models in the country. However, the importance of having iPhone production much more widely dispersed around the globe was underlined when the coronavirus hit China, shutting down iPhone production in the country.

 

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Secret Service Purchased ‘Location X’ Product to Track Phones

Andrew Orr ·

A Secret Service document reveals the purchase of “Location X” a product that uses location data harvested from apps. The product is from a company called Babel Street. If that name sounds familiar it’s because two employees left the company to form “Anomaly Six” another location tracking company.

“The purpose of this modification is to add 1 licenses [sic] to CLIN 0003 and incorporate the Master Subscription Agreement and Locate X Addendum as attached,” the contract document reads. Motherboard obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.