This is how your Gmail account got hacked

By NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

If your Gmail account got hacked, blame your friends.

You are 36 times more likely to get scammed if your contacts' accounts have been hacked, according to a study released this week by Google (GOOG).

It's rare. On an average day, only nine in 1 million accounts gets stolen. But when it happens, the operation is swift. These are professional criminals at work, looking through your email to steal your bank account information.

The criminals are concentrated in five countries. Most of them live in China, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Nigeria and South Africa. But they attack people worldwide, duping them into handing over Gmail usernames and passwords.

Google has effective scans to block them and emergency options to get your account back. But criminals still manage to pull off the attacks.

Here's some more of what Google found in its three-year study.

Effective scams work 45% of the time. This number sounds huge, but well-crafted scams can be convincing. They send official-looking emails requesting your login credentials. And sometimes they redirect you to a page that looks like a Google login, but it's not.

Safety tip: Don't ever email your username or password -- anywhere. And always check the Internet address in the URL above to ensure you're at the actual Gmail site.

They usually steal your account in less than a day. Once they have your login credentials, the average criminal hijacks your account within seven hours. For an unlucky 20%, the bad guys do it in just 30 minutes. Then they change your password to lock you out.

Safety tip: Sign up for account alerts on your phone or a backup email. And move fast.

Related: Apps aimed at children collect a shocking amount of data

It takes only 3 minutes to scan your email for valuable stuff. They're looking for any email that shows your bank account information and images of your real life signature. They also search for login credentials for other accounts at Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) or PayPal. They use the email search feature, looking for phrases like "wire transfer," "bank" and "account statement."

Safety tip: Perform this search yourself. Go ahead and erase any email with this sensitive data. Don't leave this stuff lying around.

Expect your friends to get preyed on too. Criminals will send emails in your name asking friends for money. Typically, they use a sob story, claiming you got stuck somewhere and need help.

Fraudsters are smart at keeping this under the radar too: 15% of them create automatic email rules that forward your friends' responses to another email address. So even if you get your account back, you won't know your friends were targeted, because you'll never get their responses.

Worst of all? Sometimes fraudsters delete all your emails and contacts to prevent you from warning friends afterward. Google has an account recovery option to bring them all back -- but that's only if you actually recover your account.

Safety tip: Just make it impossible to break into your email in the first place. Sign up for two-step authentication, a second password you get by text message. It's an extra 30 seconds on every new computer, but it's worth it in the long run.

Why Do Twitter’s Top Executives Keep Leaving?

By Alison Griswold

The departures of Twitter high-ups have ticked off steadily this year. Michael Sippey, vice president of product. Doug Bowman, creative director. Chris Fry, senior VP of engineering. Ali Rowghani, chief operating officer. Chloe Sladden, head of North American media. Vivian Schiller, head of news. Most recently, Jeremy Gordon, VP of engineering. Go back further and the list stretches on.

Turnover is a given at most startups, but the changes at Twitter have continued at a startling pace since it went public exactly one year ago. At least one of these departures—Rowghani's—has been attributed to clashes with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. Others, at both the management and staff levels, have been chalked up to general confusion and frustration at the company. That's all unfortunate for Costolo, who was appointed as CEO in 2010 in part to stabilize Twitter's management after a fairly public power struggle between two of its founders.

Behind Twitter's departures and frustration might be an identity crisis. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that current and former Twitter employees describe Costolo as someone who "bounces from one idea to the next," and that people close to the CEO feel his vision for the company has grown scattered since the IPO. In recent years, Costolo has talked about Twitter as a "global town square," an "indispensable companion to life in the moment," and "the world's largest information network." As his blueprint has changed, so has his business plan; the latest push has been to expand Twitter beyond its core active users.

Since its public debut, Twitter has lost about 10 percent of its value, falling to just over $40 a share. When the customary post-IPO lockup period ended in May, the stockcrashed 17.8 percent as some of its largest early investors dumped their shares. At the same time, a slowing rate of growth in Twitter's monthly users and timeline views has caused some analysts and media outlets to write off Twitter as a stagnating company. Others have criticized Twitter for becoming too much like Facebook.

Slate's Will Oremus has already made the opposing case on both of these points: thatTwitter is not dying, and that it will never be like Facebook. On the other hand, Twitter distancing itself from Facebook is not the same as Twitter solidifying its own identity. The big questions it's reportedly toying with—should it give up on the reverse chronological feed? Use an algorithm?—could move its product in several different directions. At just one year old in the corporate world, it's not necessarily bad that Twitter doesn't have all these things hammered out. But one year is also a good point to reflect. And if it turns out that identity questions are behind most of the unrest and turnover at the company, they need to be resolved sooner rather than later.

Should Apple, Inc. Investors Fear a 2016 iPhone Sales Meltdown?

By Adam Levine-Weinberg

Of all the critical arguments put forward by bears about Apple, (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) the most plausible one is that Apple is heavily reliant on a single product for most of its sales and earnings. Indeed, Apple's iPhone revenue reached $102 billion last year, or 55.8% of total revenue. The iPhone generates an even higher share of Apple's earnings.

Bears believe that this dependence on the iPhone will be Apple's Achilles' heel. While demand for the new big-screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models is extraordinary, future iPhone models are likely to feature more incremental improvements. Could the current surge in iPhone sales turn into a slump by 2016?

The iPhone user base is big and growing

There are two main reasons why the risk of an iPhone sales slump is overblown. The first is that the iPhone user base is already fairly large relative to the number of annual iPhone sales, and that user base is still growing steadily.

Apple has sold almost 450 million iPhones in the last 3 years (Photo: Apple)

During the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years, Apple sold nearly 320 million iPhones -- and it sold another 125 million in fiscal year 2012. Given that most people hang on to their iPhones for at least two years, there are probably at least 320 million iPhones currently in use.

However, many people use their iPhones for more than two years --- particularly in countries where phone subsidies are less prominent than in the U.S. Others trade in their old iPhones, which are then resold in developing countries. Thus, the global iPhone user base is likely higher than 320 million: perhaps 350 million or even 400 million. This is supported by the fact that about a third of all iPhone usage still comes from pre-iPhone 5 models.

This user base has been growing steadily in recent years. By the middle of last year's product cycle, 25% of iPhone 5 buyers in the U.S. -- and nearly half in China -- were purchasing their first iPhone. Older models had an even higher proportion of first-time buyers.

The iPhone 6 product cycle will drive further gains. Samsung phone trade-ins at Gazellemore than tripled in the week after the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were announced.

The new iPhone product lineup will help Apple grow its user base in the next year (Photo: Apple)

As a result, the iPhone user base could reach 500 million by the end of 2015. Most of these people will still be using pre-iPhone 6 phones -- even in a best case scenario Apple is likely to sell fewer than 200 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units in fiscal year 2015. There will be hundreds of millions of older iPhones waiting to be upgraded in 2016 and beyond.

iPhone batteries don't last forever

Even if there are 500 million iPhones in use by the end of next year, Apple could still face a drop-off in sales if the replacement cycle increases from around two years to three years or four years. Apple bears believe that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus represent a massive step forward for the iPhone product line that Apple won't be able to replicate going forward.

The assumption is that once people upgrade to the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, they won't have much incentive to upgrade again every two years. (Wireless carriers are also moving away from subsidy policies that encourage upgrades every two years.)

However, this ignores one key driver of the iPhone replacement cycle: battery life. Many iPhone users find that they need to charge their phone daily, and heavy users can't always make it through a full day. iPhone batteries are designed to retain about 80% of their original capacity after 500 full charging cycles.

The iPhone 6 offers plenty of improvements -- but battery lifespan isn't one of them (Photo: Apple)

An iPhone user who charges daily will reach this point in a year and a half. For heavy users who can barely get through a full day on a brand new battery, the battery life of a 2-year old iPhone is simply not good enough.

Apple does offer to replace an iPhone's battery for $79 plus tax and shipping. However, putting nearly $100 into a 2-year old phone is a dubious proposition when you could get $150 or more toward a new phone by trading it in.

As a result, while the iPhone replacement cycle will lengthen over time, it is unlikely to mimic the three year-four year replacement cycle that is typical of laptops and tablets.

Big user base + short device lifespan = big profits

The popularity of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, along with Apple's growing global distribution network, should help the iPhone user base reach about 500 million by the end of 2015. These phones will still need to be replaced every two years-three years as battery life wears down.

This puts Apple in good position to maintain a long-term annual iPhone sales rate above 200 million units -- significantly better than what it has achieved up until now. Could there be a small pullback in 2016? Yes -- especially if Apple manages to sell more iPhones this year than what most analysts are projecting. But a big collapse in iPhone sales is highly unlikely.

$8 Billion Rival STICKS It to GoogleChances are you’ve never heard of this company. Despite the fact that it’s following, step-by-step, the same exact formula Google created almost 15 years ago… And Baidu successfully followed 10 years ago. This company is dominating in a country with over 140 million people, 88 million of which are about to get online in a big way.

Google Android 5.0 Lollipop

BY SASCHA SEGAN

It's good to get a style refresher every five years or so. I just got a new pair of glasses, and everybody's saying they're changing my look. Six years into Android's lifespan, it's getting a major facelift as well. Android 5.0 Lollipop brings a new, flatter look, better notifications, redesigned core apps, and performance improvements that address some important missing app categories on Android devices.

I'd love to say Lollipop is a "must upgrade," except you don't have a choice: You have to wait to find out if your device maker and carrier will deign to allow you to upgrade. That's always been Android's greatest weakness, and it's why 40 percent of Android users are on versions two years old or older. But it's a big enough deal that you should seek out Lollipop where you can find it.

COMPARE SIMILAR PRODUCTS

• Google Android 5.0 Lollipop

  

   
• Apple iOS 8

  

   
• Google Android 4.4 KitKat

  

   
• Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1

  

   

Material Design
The biggest visible change in Android 5.0 is Material Design, a new design language with flatter icons, simpler shapes, and bolder bars of color. This is a broad trend in the industry right now; Apple picked up on it last year with iOS 7.

Everything is cleaner, slightly rounder, and most notably flatter than it used to be. The rounding of corners helps dispel some of Android's lingering 'techie' feel and give the OS a slightly cuddlier, more consumer-friendly look. The action buttons at the bottom of the screen have been simplified down to basic shapes. In the app tray, transparency has been discarded for a basic white background. The multitasking view is now a rotating cascade of Google Now-like cards—and if you have multiple documents open in an app, they appear as separate cards.

Some of Google's most critical apps have changed, as well. Major built-in apps now have themed, colored headers. Contacts is blue. Calendar is white. Gmail is red.

Others haven't been redesigned yet. Maps, Play Music, and Chrome, for instance, are looking just the same on both Android 4.4 and 5.0 at the moment. Third party apps aren't yet on board, either, but Lollipop gives them the APIs to make it work. As Material Design spreads throughout the Android interface, it'll be like a breath of fresh air.

Features and Built-in Apps
Lollipop changes some major consumer-facing features in Android, too. The immediate biggest deal is notifications. You'll now get full, detailed notifications on your lock screen, as well as more flexible, actionable notifications popping down over your other actions. I really like the division of notifications into priority and non-priority, which can have separate alert volumes and display settings; you can set each of your apps to have priority, non-priority, or blocked notifications.

Google has finally gotten rid of the confusingly separate Gmail and Email apps. The main app now supports Google accounts, POP/IMAP for services like Yahoo and AOL, and Exchange. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The app couldn't "verify credentials" with two different iCloud accounts, and when I tried to add an Exchange account, it wanted a corporate-provided security key on my device. So you'll probably still be turning to the many available third-party email apps for Exchange support; if you use iCloud, get an iPhone.

The main Gmail index screen is a bit more spacious and curvaceous, trading in square icons for circles and adding little images to the mailbox sidebar. Because of the colored header, the action icons at the screen stand out a bit more.

The calendar has also been extensively redesigned, but in a way that I find more aesthetic than functional. The week view has been replaced with a five-day view (which is great, if you don't work weekends), you can pop down a mini-monthly calendar at any time, and the agenda view is interrupted by seasonally appropriate graphics.

Android tablets as of 4.4 supported multiple users, but now phones do, too, along with a Guest mode that can only use built-in apps with default settings. You can even restrict the Guest from making phone calls. Different users can have different sets of apps, but only one copy of each app is stored on the phone.

Battery management also appears to have been enhanced. All Android devices now get the sort of "ultra power saving mode" that Samsung devices have had for a while, which turns off background tasks when you're running low on juice. The OS also gives you predictions for how long you'll need to go before you recharge—and when you're recharging, it tries to predict how long it'll take to fill your tank.

Otherwise, this is Android. From a consumer perspective, the most important differentiator about Android is its extreme customizability. Yes, you can just let icons march across your home screen and pretend you have an iPhone. But Android really comes alive when you install custom widgets that bring the information you really want to your fingertips. I tend to put my calendar, a search box, and a single-click way to text my wife on my home screen, for instance.

Coming off a few months using an iPhone, I'm startled by how excellent Google's voice dictation and search is. In terms of accuracy and ability to get information from the Web, Google simply destroys both Siri and Cortana. With Siri, the issue was primarily voice recognition accuracy: While Siri performed Web searches very well, it heard my requests wrong far too often. With Cortana, the problem is that it uses Bing.

Google's voice commands do fall short in one major area, though. Siri is much better at getting other built-in apps to do things—for instance, to play specific songs through the music player. This is because of the superior integration across Apple's on-device apps.

Facebook Just Made It Super Easy to Kick Junk Out of Your News Feed

Leslie Horn

Facebook's rolling out a handy little update that lets manage your News Feed better. It lets you see what pages or people you're seeing the most of in your News Feed, and banish the ones you don't like. Goodbye forever, Stupid Blog I Hate.

In the settings portion of Facebook, select Manage News Feed. From there you'll see a Summary page that shows what you've seen most in the last week, and who you've unfollowed. Right there you can choose to either re-follow or unfollow, and from a menu at the top of this window, you can get as specific as people, pages and groups.

You can also use this to get rid of specific stories you don't want to see. You do this by simply tapping the arrow in the top right-hand corner of the story. This part isn't new, but what is new is that now you have the choice to say you want to see less from the person who posted it. This whole process is explained in the video below.

So far, I'm only seeing this update on the Facebook app, but you should be able to have these options on the desktop too. Looking at this just remind me how many of my cousins I've unfollowed on Facebook. (Sorry, Debbie!) But less of the stuff you don't like on Facebook is good for everyone. [Facebook via TNW]

Why Facebook's Zuckerberg wears same shirt each day

 Brett Molina

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might be known just as much for his simple wardrobe as he is as head of one of the world's most popular social networks.

So why does Zuckerberg opt for hoodies and t-shirts? The Facebook CEO addressed it during a Q&A hosted by the company Thursday.

Zuckerberg says he seeks to "spend less energy on things that are frivolous," like choosing what he'll wear each day. "I really want to clear my life so I have to make as few decisions as possible other than how to best serve this community," he says.

Although the Q&A was light on big news, it did offer some insight into Zuckerberg and Facebook, which caps a busy year with the acquisitions of VR company Oculus and messaging app WhatsApp. Among the other highlights:

On pushing for a diverse workforce at Facebook. Zuckerberg says the priority for making Facebook a diverse space is everyone's responsibility. "It is literally every person in the company's job to make their teams diverse."

On why they pushed a standalone Messenger app. Zuckerberg says the reason Facebook moved Messenger away from the main app to a standalone experience is to boost engagement. "We saw that all of the messaging apps that people were using and they relied on the most were these dedicated and focused experiences."

His review of the 2010 film The Social Network. Hint: he's not a fan. "They just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful."

On whether Facebook is losing its charm. Zuckerberg says keeping Facebook "useful" to its audience is more important than its cool factor. "I am not a cool person," he jokes. "I've never tried to be cool."

Google Maps now lets you book restaurant reservations, call Uber

By Dan Taylor



The app now has a sleeker design and more detailed maps.

Google Maps is no longer just an app that can help you find your way: now, users in the United States will be able to make restaurant reservations as well as compare pickup times with Uber to other methods of transportation.

The look of the Google Maps app has changed itself, and it will now included 3D layouts to reveal large buildings and other structures, according toYahoo. It will also have brighter colors and a sleeker design.

While using the app, users will now be able to make a last-minute reservation directly from the app using OpenTable.

The app will include buttons indicating what time a reservation is available, and if you click one, you will be taken straight to a confirmation page to fill out your full name and email. Once you add your phone number and tap confirm, your reservation will be set.


Uber riders who have the map will now be able to weigh whether it would be more beneficial to simply call an Uber car or use public transportation or walk based on information from the Google Maps app. If they opt for Uber, they can simply book a ride through Google Maps.

Specifically, Google Maps will tell you how long it will take to get somewhere via the various transit options, as well as how much it will cost for each option.