The Apple Watch is vulnerable to hacking, and therefore, U.K. ministers are banned from wearing it during cabinet meetings, reports The Telegraph. Several cabinet ministers such as Michael Gove, the former justice secretary, had a habit of wearing the smartwatches under Prime Minister David Cameron.
Photo by fancycrave1 (Pixabay)Fear of Russian hackers led to the ban
Now Theresa May has instructed the ministers not to wear their Apple Watches as hackers could use it as a listening device. For the same reason, mobile phones are not allowed in the cabinet.
“The Russians are trying to hack everything,” a source told The Telegraph.
A few days ago, Gove found himself in an embarrassing situation when a Beyonce track started playing on his Pebble watch during a cabinet meeting. His wife Sarah Vine tried to explain that he was just checking his mails covertly but pressed the wrong button.
Ms. Vine said, “So the cabinet was treated to the first few bars of a song from Beyonce.”
Russian hacking in the West has reached a high scale. Hackers gained access to confidential mails from the Democratic National Congress during the U.S. election, which led to serious concerns. They also gained access to the medical files of some of the world’s most famous athletes, notes The Telegraph.
Can the Apple Watch aid weight loss?
In other Apple news, how good the Apple Watch is as a fitness assistant can be measured by the recommendations it gives. There are three recommendations that the Apple Watch makes for the well-being of its users: sit less, move more and get some exercise. However, the Cupertino-based company does not guarantee the benefit of following these recommendations and says this on its website.
Cult of Mac asked a few questions regarding the effectiveness of the recommendations given by the Apple Watch to Cardiogram CEO Brandon Ballinger, who has collected massive data on whether Apple Watch owners have healthy tickers.
Ballinger recently performed a study analyzing the resting heart rate — the hearth rate when you are resting and relaxed. A lower resting heart rate “implies more efficient heart function and better cardiovascular fitness,” according to Mayo Clinic. So if the Apple Watch is improving the fitness of users, one could expect a lower resting heart rate among them, and Ballinger’s team found this, notes Cult of Mac.
Ballinger says “on average, each 18 minutes of exercise translated into a 1 bpm decrease in resting heart rate. Equivalently, 178 calories of movement per day translates into a 1 bpm decrease.”
