Weekly Tech Round-Up
This week: the Met turns to e-bikes, drones, and facial recognition to tackle phone theft, VR “travel” for dementia care, a Microsoft Copilot email privacy slip, an app pick for saving links, and a crucial reminder before you sell or donate a device.
🚲📷 Met Police Deploy E-Bikes, Drones & Facial Recognition to Cut Phone Theft
E-bikes, drones and live facial recognition are the latest tools the Metropolitan Police is using to cut the number of mobile phone thefts in London.
A phone is stolen in the capital every seven to eight minutes. The force warns that children as young as 14 are being targeted over social media and paid up to £100 to steal phones for organised crime gangs.
New figures show that between 2017 and 27 February 2024, out of a total of 587,498 phones stolen in London (excluding the City), just 13,998 were recovered.
Source: BBC News
🥽🌍 VR “Travel” Pilot Lets Dementia Patients Visit the World
Patients at a mental health unit in Kent are to get the chance to travel abroad — without ever leaving its four walls.
A new virtual reality (VR) pilot scheme is being set up at Maidstone’s Ruby Ward for older women with dementia.
Venice, Santiago in Chile and New York will be the destinations offered by Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust’s three-month hi-tech trial, which is due to start soon.
The trust hopes that transporting patients to familiar or relaxing locations through an immersive 360-degree experience will reduce stress and anxiety and ease restlessness.
Source: BBC News
🧩 Microsoft Fixes Copilot Chat Issue That Surfaced Confidential Emails
Microsoft has acknowledged an error causing its AI work assistant to access and summarise some users' confidential emails by mistake.
The tech giant has promoted Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat as a secure way for workplaces and staff to use its generative AI chatbot. But it said a recent issue caused the tool to surface information to some enterprise users from messages stored in their drafts and sent email folders — including messages marked as confidential.
Microsoft says it has rolled out an update to fix the issue.
Source: BBC News
🔖 App of the Week: Pixel Bookmarks
This week’s app of the week is Pixel Bookmarks. It lets you bookmark links to videos, articles and more — and it’s marketed as a modern link manager.
Pixel Bookmarks is free to download on iOS and Android devices:
🧼 Before You Sell or Donate a Device: Erase Your Data Properly
Our devices — and especially our smartphones — contain more work, personal and financial data than ever before. If you are selling, donating, or trading in your smartphone (or other device), you should erase all of this personal data so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
The best way to make sure your data is completely erased is to use your phone’s Erase All Content and Settings or Factory Reset feature. The exact name depends on the device you use.
Using this feature removes your personal data (including messages, contacts, photographs, browsing history, Wi-Fi codes, passwords, and any apps you’ve installed), so make sure you have a backup of anything you want to keep.
Quick checklist: back up your data, sign out of key accounts, remove SIM/SD cards, then factory reset — and only then hand the device over.
