In recent news, Australia’s consumer protection regulator is making Apple cough up AU$9 million (about £5m, or nearly US$7m) for not fulfilling its obligations in respect of customer refunds.
The thorny issue at stake in this case goes back more than two years, and relates to the infamous iOS “Error 53“.
The error wasn’t new when it hit the news in early 2016, but it turned into a bit of an internet meme around that time, with some users complaining that their iPhones suddenly locked up with Error 53 on the screen after applying an iOS update.
Apple’s iOS updates almost always include a number of security fixes, not just to patch known bugs but also to harden Apple devices against tampering and modification – even for changes made by the the owners of the devices themselves.
Error 53 seemed to be related to a hardware integrity check on your phone’s fingerprint scanner, amongst other things, and could therefore be triggered on devices where “unofficial” repairs had been made, for example by travellers on the road in countries without approved Apple repairers.
The Aussies decided that Apple ought to have replaced devices or refunded consumers even for “unofficially” modified devices – but we felt there was a whole lot more to the story than that.
Who should get the final say over what you’re allowed to do with digital devices you’ve bought outright with your own after-tax income?
So we went on Facebook Live to ask, “Who owns your iPhone?”
Can’t see the video directly above this line, or getting an error such as “no longer available”? Watch on Facebook instead.
No sound? Click the speaker icon in the bottom right to unmute.
Note. With most browsers, you can watch without having a Facebook account or logging in.
Internet Explorer users may need to use https://www.facebook.com/SophosSecurity/videos/ instead.
Richard W. Born
I’m sorry, but I cannot see your video, because I don’t have a Facebook Account. Never had, and the more Facebook flaws and scandals reach the press, the happier I am about not having joined that cash greedy bunch. But isn’t it a little strange, that Sophos, a company, extremely well informed about what’s good what’s bad in the internet, is still using Facebook, while there are enough alternatives for showing something?
Paul Ducklin
The thing is, you don’t need a Facebook account to watch it.
As for there being “enough alternatives” for live video streaming that works well… which one did you have in mind?
Nobody_Holme
Just FYI, edge for windows mobile has gone from being able to use the direct view link to redirecting me to the login page with “you must log in first” now.
I know, i know, not many of us left, but its still a pain (and i have the facebook IP ranges null routed at home, so the video simply isn’t there.
As for alternatives. YouTubs, twitch under the IRL category is apparently acceptable nowadays, comedy use of Pornhub (they’d likely be fine with it), various highly disreputable companies, (do VK do livestreams yet?), for a start.
Faceblech is still the best for the Sophos/Naked Security use case, however. For the refuseniks, its not like YouTubs isn’t just as bad, and Twitch will take twelve years to move the video to something that can stream to you once its over a day or so old, so isn’t fit for purpose.
IT Guy
Cannot connect to it without Facebook saying ‘login to see more of Naked Security’
Please use a better platform than Facebook to link videos if you HAVE to use them!
Thanks Paul :)
Paul Ducklin
What browser are you using? I’ve tested it with Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Firefox and mobile Safari on Windows 10, macOS, macOS, Linux and iOS – the video played just fine without a Facebook account.
I did have problems with IE, thus the note in the article to that effect above.
IT Guy
Paul, using IE, today allowing me to see it.
Paul Ducklin
Man, all this fuss and complexity caused by petty variations in browser behaviour! What we need is a unifying technology that brings all browsers together with a true, cross-platform interactive video plugin. We could call it… hey, I know what we could call it, because it would solve all our problems in a…
…Flash!
Someone should seriously do that.
David Pottage
When I tried to watch the video (without being logged into Facebook), it said that I needed upgrade Adobe Flash. I don’t have it installed, and I am not about to, and in any case Facebook videos work fine on phones that don’t have Flash installed.
So I tried logging in, and Lo the video started working. WTF??
Paul Ducklin
I can’t answer that. (Though WTF may be a rhetorical question :-)
I haven’t seen Facebook ask for Flash that I can remember – FB was, IIRC, one of the early abandoners. what was your OS/browser combo?
Richard W. Born
OK, I,ve figured out why it didn’t work for me;
1: In Safari on my iPad I have adblockers activated. The video didn’t appear. After switching the adblockers off, the video is there. So apparently the video has been identified as an advertisement by the blockers. Which is a pity, because that means I have to switch the blockers off and on here, which happens occasionally on a few other websites as well. Doable, but quite unconvenient.
2: In case the video is not there, your website sais “Can’t see the video direct above this line …. ? …….. watch on Facebook instead.” When clicking on that, I get the familiar Facebook alert that I have to log in or sign up.
Finally, I have to admit, that I don’t have an good answer about the alternatives. It’s just that I, as a “consumer”, get so many working videos on numerous websites without Facebook, so that I got the impression that that hardly could be a big problem.
Paul Ducklin
But are these “many working videos” you refer to originally streamed live so that people can ask questions and comment in real time?
Perhaps live streaming is not something we really need to bother with any more, but it’s the main reason we do these sessions live and interactive, rather than as recordings. We are looking for something with a cinema-verite style (if nothing else, it takes off any corporate “edge” that might otherwise be ascribed to the video). And of the live streaming services out there, my own personal opinion is that Facebook is, at the moment, the best and only game in town (and anyway, if we picked another provider, e.g. YouTube, we’d just get a sea of critique from the anti-Googlers out there).
Anyway, thaks for your comments – we’ll revisit this whole thing and figure out if we can please all the people all the time :-)
Cantab
Ditto, in Firefox, I get a pop-up asking me to sign-in or register
I don’t want to sign up with the spawn of the devil which has probably taken my browser finger print (which it will aggregate/sell) for just going to the site
It makes me wonder about Sophos if they associate with such a pariah organisation
Paul Ducklin
Point taken. But given that most of our viewers are comfortable with Facebook as a social networking service (we do, after all, have 250,000 people who follow us there); that most non-Facebookers who watch our videos on Naked Security don’t seem to need to login or register; that these videos are a tiny fraction of what we publish, specifically intended for those who like live video blogs; that whichever online service we choose will offend *someone’s* sense of digital righteousness…
…couldn’t you just read all our other articles that aren’t videos? It’s not as though we try to hide the ones with [VIDEO]s in them, after all.
I’m not sure we can fix this to please everyone. If you hate Sophos for not hating Facebook, I think we have reached an impasse. As someone once famously said, “Haters gonna hate.”
Nobody_Holme
Out of interest, have you looked at streaming it on Facebook and then cloning the VOD of the stream to YouTube?
Works for plenty of gaming streamers, might work well for you guys and drive traffic up a bit with some handy links back to Facebook and here.
Just an idea, feel free to moderate this out and ignore/use entirely at your discretion.
David
Another excellent vidcast, thank you. Just a conspiracy theory gone mad, do you think given the phone part in question is integral to the phone’s security, and given the Australian government’s hawkish stance on vendor encryption, this is an attempt to punish Apple for their continued stance on protecting consumer privacy?
hqboss
Regarding Apple abandoning there phones, IOS 12 coming out this autumn will be supported on iPhone 5S, a phone released in 2013. This is by far a longer support period than really any other Android phone out there. I have a Nexus 5x, from 2015 and I will not be supported in Android 9 coming out this autumn.