Consumers beware! Ofcom's seen a scary new mobe nasty: APPS Telecoms industry regulator Ofcom has just noticed that there are things called “apps” and has decided that people might like to know about them. “Apps are becoming an increasingly important way to communicate and access the internet through our phones, tablets and TVs”, explains the “Using apps safely and securely on your …
Really not sure what you are saying here, there is no Official UK National Lottery app available from Google Play, so yes, this app is definitely something that should be avoided.
If however, you are implying there is supposed to be some kind of link between Ofcom and the UK National Lottery then I think you've got your wires crossed somewhere. Although the regulators of both are of course funded by the same ministry of fun.
Or perhaps you are talking about some other country's lottery, if so I'll shut up now.
What I'm saying is that there IS an official UK National Lottery app, which they cannot put on Google Play due to US anti-gambling rules.
You have to download it yourself from the UK National Lottery website, enable "unknown sources" & install it yourself.
See https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/android/installation?icid=bsp:na:tx
Note also the subtle difference at the bottom of the NL pages:
Icon for "Available on App Store" [Link to iTunes]
Icon for "Available on Android" (not Google Play Store) [Link to page @WonkoTheSane mentions with instructions to download from AWS server and sideload]
Interestingly - the Android side load instructions don't tell people to turn off "Install from untrusted sources" when they've completed their NL app install. For the average punter (i.e. non-El Reg reader), that won't enable side loading by default, nor understand the implications, that becomes a gaping security hole.
I suppose my question here is, "How do Apple include the NL app in their App store if Google cannot include it because of, as claimed, the anti-gaming laws? Do Google Play put all their servers in the US?"
that "Apps" are something new to them, is indicative of the pace at which these bodies seem to trundle along. There is no wonder the UK IT infrastructure is the turgid mess it is in at the moment.
They seem to operate behind several iterations of the public and technology.
Ship out all the old cronies who still believe that travelling over 30 mph will kill you and replace it with some younger blood who have a vague idea of what it is they are talking about.
"Ship out all the old cronies who still believe that travelling over 30 mph will kill you and replace it with some younger blood who have a vague idea of what it is they are talking about."
Yes, the one's that flock to give away their personal information to big business for a few trinkets, who ignore or do not understand market distortion and abuse of dominance as their search engine of choice shows them where to view more 'relevant' cat videos. I have full confidence in your new guardians of our freedoms.
"They seem to operate behind several iterations of the public and technology."
This is universally true of all government regulators, and I've worked with a few (in fact some of this morning listening to one droning on). As it happens he wasn't old in calendar years, only in mindset.
In fact, he was explaining about how his regulator was going to act decisively to enable "smarter markets", even though " we don't know how these markets will turn out".
And I think this give a clue as to the purpose of having regulators: they employ people who aren't employable anywhere else, to radically reshape entire industries without a clue as to how they will eventually work. This could explain the entirely captured financial services regulators, the incompetent energy regulator, the clueless communications regulator, the ineffectual regulator of solictors, the bunglers of the health regulators, and so forth.
Perhaps some cartoon public information films can be produced to accompany the leaflet. Starting with 'Apps explained', moving onto 'Action after installing an app' and ending with the scary 'casulties', where it tells you to wrap your phone in brown paper and bury it in the garden.
"We can only assume that at each of those meetings it was decided to make the document that little bit more patronising*, because the end result is off the scale"
I thought 'patronising' was their remit, after all they do seem to do an awful lot of it and yes it usually is of the 'they all have a mental age of five' variety.
I've always had this persistent image I can't shake of Ofcom personified as a slightly dim, very '1950s BBC' looking chap in a tweed jacket, sitting in a comfy armchair and smoking a briar pipe. Disturbing...
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