In today’s letter: Playing Santa’s IT helper; what’s Web3? Joanna’s NFT explainer; how tech-savvy kids thwart parental controls; cyberbullying at school; the iPhone feature to set up before you die; and more. But first...

Let’s talk about dots. Nope, not the gumdrop candies that lodge in your teeth for days. I’m talking about all the dots between Apple’s annual software releases, like this week’s iOS 15-dot-2.

In the past, these “dot releases” tended to include minor updates to the operating system. But not anymore: Over the last few years, they have come to include important feature updates to your iPhone. Think of them like those Windows service packs of old but for your iPhone—and arriving far more frequently. 

Just look at the historical record. iOS 5? Two dot releases. iOS 14? Eight!

And iOS 15 could top that! In October, iOS 15.1 added SharePlay, a feature that lets you bring movies and movies into your FaceTime calls. iOS 15.2 adds a new anti-sexting tool for kids and a digital legacy tool so you can specify who has access to your Apple account—your photos, notes, mail and more—when you die. Still coming in early 2022: support for digital ID cards.

An Apple spokesman said the company is focused on delivering the best experience and releases software features when they are ready.

There are two ways to look at this software-creep phenomenon:

#1: This is good. Like Apple said, the company doesn’t have to release half-baked features, instead it can wait until the oven timer has gone off. Plus, many of the updates also include security patches and privacy features.

#2: This is annoying. We’re always updating, figuring out where these new features live and how to use them. The iOS settings menu is already more packed with switches than Home Depot’s lighting department. (When iOS 15 came out, even Jimmy Fallon reached out to me to ask how to enable some stuff. On the plus side, that landed me an appearance on the Tonight Show this week.)

Worse, sometimes these settings don’t work correctly. Many people emailed me this week to say they had trouble with the Legacy Contact feature. Some said they got messages that their Legacy Contacts had been deleted immediately after adding them—even though the contacts didn’t delete the request.

The spokesman said this is because legacy contacts themselves need to also have iOS 15.2 or equivalent running to receive the digital keys. (They don’t have to have iPhones to be named, but you’ll have to send them the key another way.) The spokesman said Apple will improve how it communicates this to users.

Maybe that improvement will appear in the next dot release—it’s surely just around the corner.

—Joanna Stern, the Journal’s Senior Personal Technology Columnist, is based in her New Jersey basement office

I am the family IT person, an unofficial job I imagine many of you have also held, willingly or not. Here’s a list of tech tuneups for less tech-savvy loved ones, including how to add digital shortcuts to their Covid vaccine cards and free up storage space on their phones.

👉 Read Nicole’s full column here.

The internet hasn’t turned out the way it was supposed to.

In its earliest incarnation, before some Wall Street Journal readers were born and the rest had fewer automatically renewing digital subscriptions, it was supposed to be distributed, user-controlled and, in a word, democratic.

Now members of the tech elite are banding together to bring the Web back to its idealist origins. They call their vision ‘Web3.’

👉 Read Christopher’s full column here.

Flash Mobsters: A recent rash of thefts by fast-moving mobs at stores in the Bay Area and outside Minneapolis were organized on social media and committed by people who often didn’t know one another, according to law-enforcement officials investigating the incidents.

Taylor Made: Dual promotions as co-CEO of Salesforce and chairman of Twitter have turned Bret Taylor from entrepreneur into one of tech’s most high-profile executives. 

If you wince when you hear the term ‘nonfungible token,’ fear not. We created an NFT to help explain this whole crypto revolution in a clear, easy-to-understand way.

👉 Watch Joanna’s video here and read her column here. 

Apple and Google, the two main software providers for smartphones, have touted parental controls as a way for parents to keep tabs on their children’s technology use. But tech-savvy children, whose online time skyrocketed during the pandemic, are finding ways to circumvent the controls meant to protect them.

👉 Read Yoree Koh’s full report here. 

• Hello World vs. Hello Apple: What Do You See When You Look at This Image? (Gizmodo)

• My Trip Into the Metaverse With Facebook Defender-In-Chief Nick Clegg (FT)

• FTC Slows Meta Platforms’ Metaverse Strategy by Extending Antitrust Probe of VR Deal (The Information)

Hackers linked to China and other governments are among a growing assortment of cyberattackers seeking to exploit a widespread and severe vulnerability in computer server software, according to cybersecurity firms and Microsoft.

👉 Read Robert McMillan and Dustin Volz’s full report here.

📖 More on cybersecurity:

Facebook, Other Researchers Step Up Fight Against Cyberspying For Hire

Global Fight Against Log4j Vulnerability Relies on Apache Volunteers

Israeli Cyber Firm NSO Explores Sale, Closure of Spyware Unit

Apple released iOS 15.2, and among many other features, the software update includes a much overdue Legacy Contact setting. The new tool allows you to specify who can access your Apple account—your photos, notes, mail and more—when you die.

First, you need iOS 15.2. You know the drill: On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > General > Software Update, then follow the prompts.

When that’s done, go to Settings and tap your name at the top. Select Password & Security then, toward the bottom of the screen, Legacy Contact. You’ll be able to add up to five legacy contacts.The people in your Family Sharing plan will automatically be suggested.

👉 Read Joanna’s full column here.

TikTok is flooding teen users with videos of rapid-weight-loss competitions and ways to purge food that health professionals say contribute to a wave of eating-disorder cases spreading across the country.

A Wall Street Journal investigation involving the creation of a dozen automated accounts on TikTok, registered as 13-year-olds, found that the popular video-sharing app's algorithm served them tens of thousands of weight-loss videos within a few weeks of joining the platform.

👉 Read Tawnell D. Hobbs, Rob Barry and Yoree Koh’s full report here.

It’s like a scene straight out of the teen drama “Gossip Girl.” Middle-school students are creating anonymous Instagram accounts to dish on who’s dating, who’s cheating and who’s carrying weed in their backpack. In some cases, kids are posting photos of other kids, making fun of their hair or clothes. Some accounts spread rumors about students’ sexuality.

School-gossip Instagram accounts resurface questions about educators’ role in policing students’ social-media activity.

👉 Read Julie’s full column here.

...when Cryptmas becomes a thing—and fashion statement.

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Brought to you by tech news editor Robert Wall and Personal Tech  bureau chief Wilson Rothman. You can reach them by replying to this newsletter, and follow them on Twitter: @R_Wall and @wjrothman.