December 15, 2015

40 million may lose cellphone access to the Web in January

Buzzfeed  - On the morning of Jan. 1, 2016, anyone with a cell phone more than five years old will be unable to access the encrypted web — which includes sites like Facebook, Google, and Twitter — according to a new plan to upgrade the way those sites are verified.

It might not be a big deal in New York or San Francisco, where a 5-year-old phone is treated as an antique, but in some parts of the developing world up to 7% of internet users could find themselves suddenly cut off from the world’s most popular sites, according to research recently published by Facebook and CloudFlare.

“This is a story about encryption and the conflict between how you support the future and the past at the same time,” said Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, during an interview with BuzzFeed News. “It is important to remember that the internet is not just guys with the newest laptops and an iPhone 6.”

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