Security Update Required for Android Devices
What happened?
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard is a security standard for organizations that handle credit cards from major credit card providers. In order to remain compliant with these security standards, we had to stop supporting an older security protocol for interacting with our servers. In this case, we removed support for a standard called TLS 1.0. We stopped support on June 30th which can affect Android devices that run an OS of 5.1 or lower.
You can read more on this here.
The Geocaching® application has made those changes in version 6.5.1 and will reflect in future versions as well. The Geocaching® application supports Android OS 4.4 and above.
What can I do to get the Geocaching® app up and running again?
First, check your phone’s operating system (OS) version.
If your Android OS version is 4.4 or higher, you only need to update your app to the latest version. You can do this through the Google Play Store.
If your Android OS version is lower than 4.4 you will need to see if there are any updates for your device. If you are able to update your device to an Android OS version of 4.4 or higher, you can then update your app through the Google Play Store.
Unfortunately, versions of the Android OS that are lower than 4.4 are no longer supported by the Geocaching® app. Go to Geocaching.com in your phone’s browser if you wish to continue using a device with an OS level lower than 4.4.
What about third party apps that use Geocaching’s APIs?
Applications that Geocaching does not maintain can be difficult for us to diagnose. However, there are a few things you can check first to see if the problem can be resolved.
First, check and see if there is an update to the third party app in the Google Play Store. This will ensure we are up to date and can start from a good place.
If updating the app does not resolve the issue, check your Android OS version. If it is lower than 6.0, check if there are any updates for your phone. Having both an updated OS and the most updated version of the app from the provider should help with resolving most issues.
If these steps do not resolve your issue with the third party application, we encourage you to reach out to the app’s developer for support.
