Google Updates Trio of Apps: Wallet, Authenticator, Google+

Google is celebrating Leap Day with a few minor updates to some of its Android apps, delivering new versions of Wallet, Google+, and Authenticator to the Android Market today.

Google Wallet finds itself getting the most significant updates of the trio, but we're still mainly in bugfix territory here. A couple changes have been introduced to how the app handles address input, letting you using a longer address or a PO Box when setting up a prepaid card. Reward cards linked to the app should now see improvements with keeping their data synced-up. Most of us struggle to find one smartphone on which we can run Wallet, but for those of you with multiple NFC-capable phones, this release will better handle sharing your account on more than one handset.

Google Authenticator, letting your use your phone to securely log in to your Google account on public terminals, gets some unspecified bug fixes, but seeing as the whole point of this app is security, we'd treat this release with a little more seriousness than your standard bugfix update. To that end, Google+ also gets some minor, unspecified bug fixes, along with improvements to app stability.

All three Google apps are currently available in the Android Market.

06:14 by Robert dawne · 0

Google Fixes Wallet Security Hole

Google officially announced that it has “restored the ability to issue new prepaid cards to the Wallet.” Additionally, the company “issued a fix that prevents an existing prepaid card from being re-provisioned to another user.”
These improvements in the update above come hot on the heels of exploits discovered recently related to Google Wallet. The easiest among them was to clear the app’s data under settings; once done, the application was asking for a new PIN but Google prepaid card information was remembered.
Now that you’re safe once again, let us know whether you have any doubts in using the offering (knowing that the brute-force method is still present, though requiring root access).

07:53 by Robert dawne · 0