Older devices accessing online content

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BLB Android App

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Apr 14, 2020, 9:37:39 PM4/14/20

to BLB Android App

The recent problem we are seeing has to do with older devices being unable to talk newer technologies. All of the Internet communications that our app does with our servers uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt things going back and forth. On March 31st, certain types of SSL encryption methods were intentionally obsoleted due to their inherent weakness. These weakness have been known for quite some time, but time was given to allow providers and consumers time to migrate.

On April 14th, 2020, we released an update to the app that may help some of these older devices learn how to do *new things*. Please look to see if there is an update in the Play Store on your device for the BLB app.

If your device is older than Android 4.4, there are unfortunately only two options available. See if there is an update to your device to Android KitKat(4.4) or higher, or replace the device with something running at least Android KitKat(4.4) or higher.

If your device is running KitKat (4.4) or newer, please visit the Play Store and update the app as we have recently released a patch to help some older devices.

We are not particularly fond of asking or telling people to run out and spend money. We try as hard as we can to maintain legacy support for as long as possible, but eventually all devices age beyond our capabilities to support. Technology, especially with respect to security, is moving forward at a very fast pace. Just recently, SHA1 SSL certificates began being phased out, due to the same issue we're discussion right now. https://blog.qualys.com/ssllabs/2014/09/09/sha1-deprecation-what-you-need-to-know This hurt a lot of iOS and Android users when we were forced to step up and migrate to new web certificates.

Realize that we are still being able to support devices that are seven generations old, but sadly the day is coming when KitKat, Lollipop, etc are going to be let behind as well. Again, we'll try as hard as we can to maintain legacy support for as long as we're allowed to.