Tech-Player: app

WeChat daily active users top 768 million

The popular messaging app has increased its daily users number by 35 percent in the last twelve months.

The usage of popular messaging app WeChat continues to expand, with the number of daily users exceeding 768 million in September, up 35 percent over the same period last year, according to a year-end report on WeChat released by the Chinese technology giant Tencent on Wednesday.

The report, which unveiled a series of key figures of the most popular messaging app in China, said 50 percent of WeChat users spent 90 minutes on the application every day.

Typical WeChat users are those born in the 1980s and 1990s, accounting for 65 percent of the overall users, and have sent 80 percent of the total messages.

Youngsters aged between 17 and 21, and seniors over 55 years, are responsible 14 percent and 1 percent of overall population on the app, according to the report.

Overall messages sent through the app in 2016 surged by 67 percent over last year. Typical WeChat users sent 74 messages on the daily basis, while seniors over 55 years sent 44 messages every day.

The use of voice chat and video chat functions on WeChat reached 100 million daily calls this year, up 180 percent from 2015.

The report said typical WeChat users walked 5,900 steps daily, while seniors above 55 walked 6,700. WeChat users sent out on average of 28 "red envelopes" on the app every month, with an average amount of 580 yuan ($83).

Apple extends developer deadline for mandatory App Transport Security support

Apple has backtracked on demands for all App Store app developers to use secure network connections by the beginning of 2017.

Roy Zipstein | Apple

Apple has given app developers more time to turn on App Transport Security (ATS) after originally insisting that software submitted to the App Store utilize the feature by the beginning of 2017.

According to a brief note posted on the Apple developer website on Wednesday, ATS, first introduced in iOS 9 and OS X v10.11, will now not become mandatory for apps to support by the 1 January 2017.

Instead, Apple has decided to give developers "additional time to prepare" for the switch and so has extended the original deadline.

ATS is a feature of Apple's iOS and OS X operating systems which ensure that applications do not load resources over HTTP connections, which are not secure and may be eavesdropped on by attackers. Instead, ATS requires that resources are loaded through HTTPS, a secure communication protocol often used by other services including online banks and e-commerce websites which encrypts data through Transport Layer Security Layer (TLS).

Back in June at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the tech giant revealed that the security feature would become non-negotiable by January 1, 2017.

Currently, ATS is enabled by default but app developers do have the option of disabling the feature.

"It [ATS] improves privacy and data integrity by ensuring your app's network connections employ only industry-standard protocols and ciphers without known weaknesses," Apple states in the firm's ATS developer notes. "This helps instil user trust that your app does not accidentally leak transmitted data to malicious parties."

While developers can still create exceptions to the rule and do not have to implement ATS for every transfer, the company recommends that HTTPS should be used exclusively to protect user privacy and data.

In 2015, Google faced criticism after bringing the spotlight onto methods to create exceptions for apps to connect to insecure domains -- for the sake of advertising -- despite ATS. While Apple already provided the way to do so in the developer notes, Google was accused of placing advertising above what could be construed as user privacy and interests.

No new deadline has been set for developers to utilize ATS, but the iPad and iPhone maker has promised an update when a new date has been confirmed.