Last Wednesday, Apple released the final versions of iOS 13.5 and iPadOS 13.5 to the public.

The updates contained the Exposure Notification API that developers can use to create contact tracing apps for the novel coronavirus as well as a simplified unlock process for Face ID for users wearing face masks.

iOS 13.5 was the first major public software release for the iPhone since March, but it wouldn’t be a software launch without a hiccup or two. MacRumors reported last Friday that some iOS users were experiencing a bug which made it impossible to open certain apps. The following error message began appearing on the screen for affected users: “This app is no longer shared with you.” Now, a potentially related bug is rearing its ugly head.

On Sunday, several iOS users took to the MacRumors forums to report that anywhere between 10 or 15 to hundreds of pending app updates were showing up on the App Store. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy on its own, but many of those updates were for the same version number of the app as the one that was already installed on their devices. In other words, Apple appeared to be reissuing updates for apps regardless of whether or not the user had already downloaded and installed those updates, but without providing any explanation.

As of Monday morning, Apple has yet to provide any updates on either of these issues, but MacRumors suspects that they might be related. If the “no longer shared” error had something to do with expired certificates, it might have been necessary for Apple to reissue the latest software updates to restore or refresh the certificates.

If you run into the sharing error and an update from the App Store doesn’t fix it, there is another way to get access to your app without losing any of your data or settings. Head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and scroll down until you find the problematic app. Tap on it and then tap the Offload App button. You can then reinstall the app and pick up right where you left off. As long as you don’t run into the error on dozens of apps, it’s a fairly simple process and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get everything back to normal.

Again, we’ve yet to hear anything from Apple about the “no longer shared” error or the bug that is forcing some users to re-update dozens or even hundreds of apps, but we’ll update this post if we do.

A single iPhone app is important that it might keep you hooked to iOS forever, and that’s iMessage. It’s an SMS alternative that Apple devised many years ago, the one that brought over the blue message bubbles to mobile, which become a key identifier for iPhone users.

iMessage works on iPad and Mac, offering the same set of rich texting features, and all communication is protected by end-to-end encryption. Apple never made an iMessage app for Android or any other platform, and Google has been struggling to come up with a similar alternative for many years. The latest attempt is called RCS (rich communication services), and it’s not available to Android users everywhere. Moreover, Google Messages is less secure than iMessage, as it doesn’t support end-to-end encryption, which is a key feature for messaging apps. Google is finally going to fix it, as it’s already testing full encryption on an internal build of Google Messages.

iMessage was the first to make end-to-end encryption popular among chat apps. What that type of encryption does is to ensure that only the sender and the recipient of the message can read it. It can’t be intercepted by hackers or accessed by the company.

Other apps, including WhatsApp and Signal, also offer end-to-end encrypted instant messaging. Facebook confirmed last year that all of its properties that can provide chat support, including Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, will move to end-to-end encryption. With that in mind, Google can hardly afford not to match those offerings when it comes to mobile security standards.

End-to-end encryption is referenced in Google Messages 6.2.031, an internal app release first found by APK Mirror.

The folks at 9to5Google analyzed the code and found several traces where end-to-end encryption is clearly referenced. Here are a few examples:

<string name=”encrypted_rcs_message”>End-to-End Encrypted Rich Communication Service message</string>

<string name=”encryption_default_fallback_body”>”SMS/MMS texts aren’t end-to-end encrypted.nnTo send with end-to-end encryption, wait for improved data connection or send messages now as SMS/MMS.”</string>

As seen in the second example above, Google Messages will require an internet connection for the feature to work. Without cellular internet or Wi-Fi, iMessage fails as well and can fall back on SMS/MMS, which are unencrypted by default.

Google’s RCS platform will work similarly, and you’ll probably be able to customize your RCS experience. On the iPhone, you can choose not to send messages as SMS/MMS when there’s no internet.

The code also indicates that when sending location data to your contacts, the information will be encrypted. Also, you’ll be able to allow apps to access the contents of your messages.

Also, both parties might have to use Google Messages to take advantage of end-to-end encryption, although other RCS apps could also get support in the future.

It’s unclear when this particular version of Google Messages will be launched, or whether end-to-end encryption will be enabled soon. But it does look like the kind of security feature that could be advertised for Android 11.

Jailbreaking or rooting refers to unlocking a phone from the manufacturer’s software protections allows users to sideload apps, and gives them more control of the device.

That’s not to be confused with unlocking a phone which was purchased from a carrier and which might be locked to that operator’s network out of the box. Some iPhone users have relied on jailbreaks to run software that never made it to the App Store or to study the security of iOS, and jailbreaking has been around for almost as long as iOS. Hackers who discovered hardware or software security issues that allowed them to unlock access to the iPhone operating system have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with Apple for years. As soon as they’d find some new vulnerabilities ta attack, Apple would patch them. It’s now 2020 and jailbreaking a phone or tablet is probably not what most people want to do, or have to. But a hacker group just released the most important jailbreak software in years, a tool that can break not just old devices, but also the latest iPhone 11, 2020 iPad Pro, and iPhone SE. Even better, Pwn20wnd’s Unc0ver tool works on the newest iOS release, which came out just a few days ago.

Unc0ver is the first jailbreak built on a zero-day in years, Wired reports, which is a huge accomplishment in this day and age. Apple makes a big deal of iPhone security and privacy, and it’ll likely patch the software exploit in an upcoming iOS release. This is a software-level jailbreak, which means Apple can fix it. A few months ago, hackers discovered an unpatchable Apple hardware flaw (dubbed checkm8) that could be used for jailbreak purposes on any iPhone or iPad released between 2011 and 2017.

Apple could fix the new kernel issue as soon as two to three weeks, Pwn20wnd and other security researchers told Wired. It could be done even earlier if Apple had already discovered it.

The jailbreak will not compromise battery life or other Apple services, including iMessage, Apple Pay, and iCloud. The hackers say the jailbreak preservers Apple’s user data protections and doesn’t undermine iOS’s sandbox security.

“This jailbreak basically just adds exceptions to the existing rules,” Pwn20wnd, told WIRED. “It only enables reading new jailbreak files and parts of the file system that contain no user data.”

Even so, you should tread carefully when attempting to use such tools on your devices, make sure you understand what jailbreaking means and what the risks are. We won’t tell you how to do it, and most people probably shouldn’t go for it in the first place.

But the new Unc0ver tool is the latest in a series of iOS security issues that have made the news recently. Only recently, we’ve learned how iOS 14 leaked several months ahead of its first beta release, giving researchers and the media early access to Apple’s unreleased iPhone operating system. Separately, the FBI has been pushing its iOS backdoor agenda, while confirming it was able to hack older iPhones using unknown tools. Companies that sell security exploits have come forward with new tools that can aid law enforcement, or made unusual claims about iOS bugs — Zerodium said a few days ago that it has too many iOS vulnerabilities on hand, so it doesn’t need to purchase additional ones.

Even though we’re months away from a new iPhone release and just a few weeks away from Apple unveiling iOS 14, we seemingly know all there is to know about Apple’s next-gen mobile hardware and software.

Despite Apple’s best efforts, and despite Tim Cook exclaiming that Apple would be “doubling down” on product secrecy, details surrounding upcoming iPhone models and iOS releases routinely leak out months ahead of time.

When it comes to an upcoming iPhone release, it’s easy to see how information tends to leak out. Apple’s supply chain, after all, is incredibly vast. In turn, trusting supply chain partners and component suppliers to effectively keep a lid on new designs and features is simply not realistic at this point. iOS leaks, however, are an entirely different matter. While you can blame the supply chain for iPhone leaks, iOS leaks, at least in theory, should be far less frequent given that new features and code should rarely leave the purview of Apple engineers.

And yet, each and every year, new iOS features start making the rounds months before WWDC. This year, of course, has been no different. Over the past few months, a multitude of iOS 14 features have leaked out. From new HomeKit features to new iMessage functionality, it seems that we can’t go a week without seeing new iOS 14 features leaking out.

So just what, exactly, is going on?

Well, VICE is reporting that an early version of iOS 14 was leaked this past February and has since been passed around amongst security researchers, hackers, and others:

Motherboard has not been able to independently verify exactly how it leaked, but five sources in the jailbreaking community familiar with the leak told us they think that someone obtained a development iPhone 11 running a version of iOS 14 dated December 2019, which was made to be used only by Apple developers. According to those sources, someone purchased it from vendors in China for thousands of dollars, and then extracted the iOS 14 internal build and distributed it in the iPhone jailbreaking and hacking community.

Not surprisingly, interest in the leaked build is immense given how much money there is in the realm of iPhone security. And though iOS leaks are par for the course, this case is particularly unusual given that the leaked version of iOS 14 started making the rounds a good 6-7 months before WWDC.

That said, final release versions of iOS are typically a lot different from early developmental builds. So while an early release of iOS 14 managed to make its way online, it stands to reason that the version we see Apple introduce at WWDC next month will, hopefully, still have a few surprises.

On Thursday, T-Mobile committed to providing free service and 5G access to first responder agencies for the next ten years, which the mobile carrier says will save them over $7 billion.

Through the Connecting Heroes initiative, T-Mobile wants to give back to fire, police, and EMS departments that put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe. Agencies that are interested in signing up for the initiative can visit t-mobile.com/connectingheroes for more information. But the news doesn’t end there. T-Mobile and Sprint customers are also being given the opportunity to get a free iPhone SE or up to $500 off of a Galaxy S20.

“The way the Un-carrier says THANK YOU is, of course, by putting money back in your pocket — like with an iPhone on us or half off one of the latest 5G superphones,” said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert in a press release on Thursday. “This weekend, every T-Mobile and Sprint postpaid customer can get a new iPhone SE on us, or half off another brand-new phone, with eligible trade-in. Why? Because ‘thank you’ — that’s why!”

The unofficial T-Mobile blog TmoNews went to the trouble of collecting all of the trade-in deals for the iPhone SE and the Galaxy S20. These are all of the devices eligible for the iPhone SE on Us promotion:

$400 off when you trade in:

• Apple iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone XS and XS Max, iPhone X, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
• Samsung Galaxy S10 series, Galaxy Note 10 series, Galaxy S9 series, Galaxy Note 9
• Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL, Pixel 3 and 3 XL
• OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren, OnePlus 7T
• LG G8 ThinQ

$200 off when you trade in:

• Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus
• Samsung Galaxy S8 series, Galaxy Note 8
• Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL
• OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro, OnePlus 6T
• LG V50 ThinQ, V40 ThinQ, G7 ThinQ

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If you’d rather spring for the Galaxy S20 with 5G connectivity, here are all of the eligible devices for that deal:

$500 off when you trade in:

• Apple iPhone 11, iPhone XS or XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone X
• Samsung Galaxy S10 series, Galaxy Note 10 series, Galaxy S9 series, Galaxy Note 9
• Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL, Pixel 3 and 3 XL
• OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro 5G McLaren, OnePlus 7 Pro
• LG V60 ThinQ

$300 off when you trade in:

• Apple iPhone 8 or 8 Plus, iPhone 7 or 7 Plus
• Samsung Galaxy S8 series, Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S7 series
• Google Pixel 3a or 3a XL
• OnePlus 6 or 6T
• LG G8 ThinQ

$200 off when you trade in:

• Apple iPhone 6s or 6s Plus
• Samsung Galaxy S6 series, Galaxy S5 series, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S4 series
• Google Pixel 2 or 2 XL, Google Pixel or XL
• OnePlus 5 or 5T
• LG V40 ThinQ, G7 ThinQ

These deals only run through Monday, May 25th, so act fast if you want a cheap or free 2020 phone.