Mobile phone

Smartphones, Ultra-Processed Foods, Diminished Family Bonds and Mental Wellness

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

As mental well-being has remained largely static across the world since 2021, so too have the rankings of countries. At the top of the rankings are many Latin American and African countries while much of the core Anglosphere ranks in the bottom quartile. With national wealth indicators such as per capita GDP negatively correlated with average mental well-being scores (see our 2021 report), this year we have made substantial progress in our understanding of why this is so. Two key findings published in Rapid Reports in 2023 show that younger age of first smartphone ownership and ultra-processed food consumption are two major contributors to our mental health challenges. In wealthier countries, the age of first smartphone ownership is much younger and ultra-processed food consumption much higher. Other contributing factors are the relatively diminished family relationships in wealthier countries that are highlighted in our 2022 annual report. The Mental State of the World in 2023 – https://mentalstateoftheworld.report/2023_read/

Another Sunday morning, just reading and connecting the dots.

I’ve downloaded several of these reports and plan to do a deep dive later.

Read these reports and think about it.

Now do something about it.

Bank by Phone? You Better Check Your Account

/ SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

Researchers from IBM Trusteer say they’ve uncovered a massive fraud operation that used a network of mobile device emulators to drain millions of dollars from online bank accounts in a matter of days.

The scale of the operation was unlike anything the researchers have seen before. In one case, crooks used about 20 emulators to mimic more than 16,000 phones belonging to customers whose mobile bank accounts had been compromised.

The thieves then entered usernames and passwords into banking apps running on the emulators and initiated fraudulent money orders that siphoned funds out of the compromised accounts. Emulators are used by legitimate developers and researchers to test how apps run on a variety of different mobile devices.

To bypass protections banks use to block such attacks, the crooks used device identifiers corresponding to each compromised account holder and spoofed GPS locations the device was known to use. The device IDs were likely obtained from the holders’ hacked devices, although in some cases, the fraudsters gave the appearance that they were customers who were accessing their accounts from new phones. The attackers were also able to bypass multi-factor authentication by accessing SMS messages.

“Evil mobile emulator farms” used to steal millions from US and EU banks — https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/evil-mobile-emulator-farms-used-to-steal-millions-from-us-and-eu-banks/

I bank online but never use my phone. I check my accounts on a regular basis to see if anything looks odd (besides some of the websites you know who shops at).

Check your accounts. Now.

People are falling off buildings in search of the perfect Instagram shot

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The leading cause of death while taking selfies is drowning, followed by transportation (trains and cars), and then falling from high places.

What a fun article.

Here’s the Wikipedia webpage that maintains a list of selfie deaths.

Not just for the young.

A 68-year-old Belgian woman was visiting the El Tatio geyser field located within the Andes Mountains of northern Chile. While attempting to take a selfie in front of an active geyser she stepped backwards and fell into the scalding hot water. Her husband pulled her out, but she died in hospital days later from burns over 85 percent of her body.