The Rest of the Day: SwiftKey Accidentally Exposed Some of the User’s Personal Information
SwiftKey remembers the words and phrases you commonly use and can sync that personalized data to the cloud so you can access it across multiple devices. However, a recent error has resulted in some emails and phone numbers in the predicted text being sent to the wrong users.
- Some SwiftKey users have noticed strange keyboard prompts such as unfamiliar email addresses or phrases in the wrong language. It turns out that a bug in the cloud sync and backup service caused the personalized set predictions to sync with the wrong users, and some of those suggestions contained potentially sensitive information. In relative terms, this is not a clear violation; some users, among other things, just saw unfamiliar names and email addresses. SwiftKey reports that only a small percentage of users were affected and they temporarily disabled the cloud service until the issue is fixed. [Telegraph]
- In other news, Microsoft is not taking a break with the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update next week. Windows Insiders will continue to receive new software builds in August as development continues. And today is the deadline for free upgrades from older versions to Windows 10. [Microsoft]
- Gizmodo is reviewing everything we know (and don’t know) about the iPhone 7. It isn’t expected to be drastically different from the previous iPhone, but long-standing rumors that it won’t have a headphone jack sounds very likely. [Gizmodo]
- As a result of an unfortunate mistake during the naturally hectic Democratic National Convention, our sister site Gawker made some oversight when it posted an unfinished draft last night against the backdrop of its quality reports. Sad! [Gawker]