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Allegations of Chinese cyber activity as the recent conflict broke out in Ukraine have been emerging.

The details appear unusually murky but one Western intelligence official believes the aim was espionage – and the cyber-attack may have been broader than previously reported.

The Times first reported that hackers, alleged to be based in China, began targeting Ukrainian websites on 23 February, the day before the invasion.

That led to questions as to whether they had advance notice of Moscow’s plans and if their intention was somehow to support Russia.

A broad set of Ukrainian government and commercial organisations were said to have been targeted by hackers, including organisations linked to nuclear power.

It is unclear how far this activity was scanning for vulnerabilities online and how many websites were actually compromised.

But the aim looks to have been espionage – stealing secrets – rather than the kind of sabotage operations which Russia was accused of carrying out just before the invasion, and when it started.

The Times cited intelligence documents – but the Ukrainian security service denied they had handed anything over and seemed to downplay the revelations, adding to confusion.

Some analysts wondered if they were worried about antagonising Beijing.

On Monday, the Chinese embassy in the UK rejected the claim and described the Times report as “sheer irresponsible talk and not credible at all”.

Russia targeted
But some Western officials believe the story is even more complex. They claim the Chinese actors went on to target systems in Russia and Belarus, as well as Poland:

“Since late February, Chinese cyber-actors have been launching cyber-attacks against government and military networks in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus,” claims one western intelligence official.

“Russia was observed to be a significant target of the recent Chinese cyber activity,” they added.

The claim cannot be independently verified, although a number of researchers and cyber-security companies say they have seen some Chinese activity and are investigating.

There are other bizarre aspects: the attacks were more amateurish and ‘noisy’ than normal, it is claimed, almost as if the hackers were less concerned about being discovered.

And the alleged Chinese hackers, in a shift from normal behaviour, are said to have launched their campaign from Western infrastructure.

Normally, they would approach their target using servers and systems around the world. but in this case it was only from Western systems.

“The scale, timing and targets of the operation indicate a significant departure,” the Western intelligence official said.

False flag
China has always dismissed accusations that it is involved in cyber-espionage and has recently been pointing the finger at Western governments, and particularly the US, over hacking into its networks.

“The targeting of both the Ukrainian and Russian targets was conducted in a non-covert way. One possible reason for this would be to try and ‘false flag’ the activity,” the intelligence official explained.

So it is possible China was taking advantage of the conflict in order to spy, not just on Ukraine but also Russia, Belarus and other countries – but perhaps trying to do so using a ‘false flag’ – so that it could try to pin any blame on Western governments.

That is one possibility, but one which Beijing is likely to deny. Trying to understand what was really happening in this case may not be easy.

Over the next five years, three new heavy-lift rockets will put thousands of satellites into low earth orbit as part of Amazon’s Project Kuiper.

The project aims to provide broadband connections using a constellation of 3,236 satellites.

Rival Starlink is said to have more than 2,300 satellites in orbit already.

The rockets will be made by Arianespace, Blue Origin – which was founded by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos – and United Launch Alliance.

Amazon says Project Kuiper aims to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband to customers including households, businesses, government agencies, disaster relief operations, mobile operators, and other organisations “working in places without reliable internet connectivity”.

Like Elon Musk’s Starlink, users will connect to the internet via a terminal that communicates with the satellites. Amazon says its experience in shipping and making products like Echo and Kindle will be useful in producing and distributing these.

“Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world,” said Dave Limp, senior vice-president for Amazon Devices & Services, in a statement announcing the deal.

New rockets
Amazon plans 83 launches over the next five years, saying it constitutes “the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history”.

The firm plans two “prototype” missions later this year – but using a rocket made by ABL Space Systems, and not the three that will launch the bulk of the satellites.

Unlike Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rockets, the three new rockets used for Project Kuiper’s launches are still in development.

Another satellite internet firm OneWeb, which is part-owned by the British government, recently decided to use SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets after losing access to the Russian-built Soyuz rockets it had been using, following the invasion of Ukraine.

In total Mr Musk hopes to launch as many as 30,000 Starlink satellites into space.

The value of this type of low-earth orbit satellite internet has already been demonstrated in Ukraine, where the United States Agency for International Development said, in conjunction with SpaceX, it had helped ship a total of 5,000 Starlink terminals to the country’s government.

But, as low-earth orbit becomes increasingly congested, astronomers have complained that the light reflected from these satellites as they pass overhead increasingly disrupts the view of the night’s sky.

Astro-photographer Mary McIntyre, said on Twitter: “The satellites are literally destroying our beautiful night sky.”

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There are also concerns that so many satellites in orbit exacerbates the risk of collision and the problem of space junk.

Twitter has limited content from more than 300 official Russian government accounts, including that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The accounts will no longer be recommended in timelines, notifications or elsewhere on the site, Twitter said.

The company said it would take action against any country which “restricts access to the open internet while they’re engaged in armed conflict”.

The platform has been severely limited in Russia since war began in Ukraine .

Currently Putin has two official accounts on the social media site: one in Russian and one in English. They have 3.6 million and 1.7 million followers respectively.

Twitter said allowing Russian government officials to post freely on the social media site, whilst simultaneously limiting the platform in Russia “creates a harmful information imbalance”.

As part of Tuesday’s action, content on more than 300 official government accounts will no longer be “recommended or amplified”. This means Twitter’s powerful algorithm will not promote these accounts.

The targeted Russian government accounts include official ministry and embassy profiles, as well as the accounts of high-ranking Russian officials.

The accounts have previously been criticised for spreading misinformation during the Ukraine war, but unlike tweets from Russian state-affiliated media outlets, they have not previously been subject to specific moderation by Twitter.

How Kremlin accounts manipulate Twitter
Twitter confirms it is being restricted in Russia
Ukraine invasion: How the war is being waged online
On 10 March the Russian Embassy in the UK’s official account claimed the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol had been faked.

The claim was false. Twitter later removed tweets making the “FAKE” claim.

Last month, a BBC investigation found further misinformation spread by official Russian government accounts, as well as evidence of coordinated activity – using multiple government accounts to drive a particular narrative – which is against Twitter’s rules.

Recent posts claiming civilian killings in the town of Bucha had been staged have also been debunked.

However, Twitter says that it is Russia’s actions in Ukraine, combined with the country’s decision to block and limit social media platforms domestically, that has led to their action.

“When a government that’s engaged in armed conflict is blocking or limiting access to online services within their country, while they themselves continue to use those same services to advance their positions and viewpoints – that creates a harmful information imbalance”, says Yoel Roth, Head of Site Integrity at Twitter.

Twitter says it is applying the rules to any country that limits access to online services while engaging in interstate warfare. But the new rules, which came into force on Tuesday, initially only affect Russian government accounts.

Not ‘tit-for-tat’
Although Twitter is not banned in Russia, the site has been severely slowed down, to the point of inoperability.

However, Twitter says its action was not retaliatory.

“To be clear, this isn’t a ‘tit-for-tat’ policy, where if you block Twitter then you get de-amplified by Twitter – this enforcement will occur whether Twitter is blocked or not,” said Mr Roth.

He added that Twitter will take action on media depicting prisoners of war which have been posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts.

“If we see media that’s published by government or state media accounts that feature prisoners of war, or if the prisoner of war is being subjected to ill treatment, things like violence, humiliation or mockery, we will require the removal of those tweets” he said.

Twitter “de-amplified” Russian state media on the platform – such as Russia Today and Sputnik – on 28 February, four days after the invasion of Ukraine began. The company previously told the BBC the action had led to a “30 percent reduction of the reach of this content”.

However the action was not enforced on official Russian government accounts.

Speaking last month, Tim Graham, a social media analyst at QUT Digital Media Research Centre in Australia, described it as a “loophole” in Twitter’s moderation policies.

“It’s certainly a blind spot in Twitter’s defences against disinformation,” he said.

Facebook users around the world have been waking up to find themselves locked out of their accounts for no apparent reason.

The message many received reads: “Your Facebook account was disabled because it did not follow our Community Standards. This decision can’t be reversed.”

One user told the BBC there was no warning or explanation given.

Parent firm Meta said it was investigating.

In a tweet, Meta’s Andy Stone said: “We’re aware that some users are experiencing issues accessing their Facebook accounts and we are working to resolve them as quickly as possible.”

He did not say how many were affected, or what the issue was.

PR consultant Jen Roberts was one of those to find herself locked out of her account. She told the BBC: “I haven’t posted anything or commented for quite some time, so it’s extremely unlikely that I’ve done anything that could be construed as offensive.”

But, despite not being an avid user, finding her account locked was still upsetting: “All of the images from my university years and family occasions are on Facebook

“I will no longer have access to 15-plus years of content, which is genuinely sad.

“It is also quite stressful not knowing what the issue is, and having no recourse to resolve it. To be given no warning and then no way to access our own data is mindboggling.”

The chief executive of a political consulting firm has responded to a report alleging Meta paid his company to “undermine” TikTok.

Internal emails, apparently seen by the Washington Post, allegedly suggested Targeted Victory’s campaign aimed to show TikTok “as a danger to American children”.

Zac Moffatt tweeted that the Post’s report mischaracterised their work and “key points are simply false”.

The BBC approached Meta for comment.

A spokesperson said: “We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success.”

Paper push
The “bare-knuckle” campaign allegedly included placing opinion pieces and letters to the editor in US regional news outlets “promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook”, the Post journalists wrote.

None of the opinion pieces or letters to the editor revealed that a Meta-funded group had been pushing them, the paper added.

In response to the article, Mr Moffat tweeted that: “The story infers that the words of the letters to the editor were not the authors’ own, nor did they know of Meta’s involvement. That is false. They will confirm that.”

In internal emails, the paper claimed, Targeted Victory urged its partners to get stories into local media that linked TikTok to dangerous trends.

“Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids’,” one Targeted Victory staff member allegedly wrote in an email apparently seen by the Post.

Challenges
The paper alleged that Targeted Victory encouraged operatives to amplify reports of dangerous trends linked to TikTok.

This included a purported Devious Licks challenge, which encouraged damage to school property, and reports of a rumoured Slap a Teacher challenge, which an investigation by news site Insider suggested did not in fact exist.

But journalistic investigations, the Post said, suggested that stories about both challenges began to spread on Facebook.

Following publication, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers – a large US teaching union – accused Facebook of fanning the flames of Devious Licks and terrifying “teachers, students and parents across America as a result”.

Those fears were echoed by TikTok itself. In response to the article, the company told the BBC: “We are deeply concerned that the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform could cause real world harm.”

Responding to the article, technology journalist Casey Newton wrote on his newsletter Platformer that the effect went beyond inconvenience, but it risked inspiring people to carry out the purported challenges.

“Even the fact that Meta might have helped to inspire such copycats ought to have been enough to kill this project when it was still being white-boarded,” he wrote.

Mr Moffatt tweeted that The Post itself had reported on the purported TikTok challenges.

Media strategies
Targeted Victory describes itself as “right-of-centre”, but Mr Moffatt said it managed “bipartisan teams”.

In 2016, Mr Moffatt met with Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as part of a group of high-profile conservative figures following allegations – which the firm denied – that it tampered with its Trending Topics feature, to promote “progressive” views.

Now it is Mr Moffatt’s work with Meta that is attracting scrutiny. However, this latest incident is not the first time the strategies of firms hired by the social media giant have been criticised.

In 2018, the New York Times exposed tactics used by a public relations company, Definers, hired by Facebook.

The paper said the firm circulated a document falsely claiming anti-Facebook campaign group Freedom From Facebook was backed by the financier George Soros.

Mr Zuckerberg said he had not been aware of the Definers actions and said the company would no longer work with the firm.

Dyson has taken its first step into wearable technology, with an eye-catching pair of over-ear headphones that come with an air-purifying mouth visor.

Best known for vacuum cleaners, Dyson has diversified in recent years with products such as fans and a hairdryer.

The headphones – dubbed Dyson Zone – are designed to tackle the growing issue of air pollution.

One reviewer said they would definitely “turn heads in the street”.

Britta O’Boyle, deputy editor at gadget publication Pocket-lint, wrote: “Their design is certainly eye catching.”

The sound quality was “excellent”, she told the BBC News, and the headphones had a “lovely construction”.

But as she had been unable to test the product outdoors, she could not say how effectively it would purify air or “how silly you feel wearing it”.

The headphones go on sale in the autumn.

“We don’t expect them to be cheap,” O’Boyle added.

Global problem
The noise-cancelling headphones come with a motor, fan and air filters in each ear cup.

Air is sucked through the filters, capturing allergens and pollutants such as nitrogen and sulphur dioxide and brake dust.

And this purified air is then channelled to the nose and mouth via the visor, which is magnetically attached to the bottom of the headphones.

It is 97% effective at getting clean air to the lungs, the company says.

Track breathing
There are four purification modes, depending on whether the wearer is walking down a street or sitting down.

The headphones use sensors to track breathing and exertion and then toggle between modes.

They also come with:

an app that lets users specify their location and determines when the filter needs replacing
a face covering comes that slots into the visor
The product has four hours’ battery life in low-filtration mode, according to Pocket-lint, or 1.5 hours in high filtration.

‘Fresh air’
Chief engineer Jake Dyson said: “Air pollution is a global problem – it affects us everywhere we go.”

“The Dyson Zone purifies the air your breathe on the move.

“And unlike face masks, it delivers a plume of fresh air without touching your face, using high-performance filters and two miniaturised air pumps.”

The non-contact aspect was a “must” for the designers, to avoid discomfort and irritation.

It was also a first foray into audio for Dyson engineers.

The Dyson Zone has been six years – and 500 prototypes – in the making

Originally, a snorkel-like mouthpiece was paired with a backpack holding the motor and inner workings.

The Verge called the finished product “bizarre”, stressing it was not an early April Fool’s joke.

“While mask wearing has been normalised considerably over the past two years, we’ll have to see whether customers will be willing to embrace this extremely odd-looking product,” it wrote.

Gadget publication Stuff.tv called it “the wildest gadget we’ve ever tried”.

And tech website Cnet said it looked “like something you’d see in a dystopian sci-fi movie”.

The National Cyber Security Centre has said more organisations should reconsider the risk of using Russian technology, including anti-virus software.

But in a blog post published today, it said that for most individual users it is safe to use Kaspersky’s software.

Germany recently suggested replacing Kaspersky anti-virus.

The Russia-headquartered firm said the German warnings were “made on political grounds”.

Critical Infrastructure.
In 2017, The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) announced it would write to all government departments, warning against using Kaspersky products for systems related to national security.

But in today’s blog post, the NCSC’s Ian Levy wrote: “We have no evidence that the Russian state intends to suborn Russian commercial products and services to cause damage to UK interests, but the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

The centre is now urging more groups to reconsider their use of Russian controlled technology including:

wider public sector organisations that weren’t covered by its 2017 guidance
organisations providing services to Ukraine
organisations that if compromised could represent a PR ‘win’ for Russia
organisations providing services related to critical infrastructure

“We’ve not seen – and don’t expect to see – the massive, global cyber-attacks that some had predicted,” the NCSC’s Ian Levy says in his blog.

But the Ukraine conflict has changed the balance of risks.

The UK already had advice from a few years back regarding use of products like Kaspersky anti-virus but this was confined to those involved in national security.

German authorities issued a new tougher warning calling for Kaspersky products to be removed after the Ukraine conflict began, raising questions about whether the UK would follow.

And the NCSC started to get phone calls from members of the public worried about turning their laptops on because they ran Kaspersky.

That has now led to a broader warning that a wider range of institutions – like those in critical infrastructure or who might be the targets of Russian retaliation – should think carefully about using any Russian products.

But this new advice still does not apply to the general public – who are not thought to be at direct risk.

2px presentational grey line
German warnings
Earlier in March, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) said that against the backdrop of the invasion of Ukraine and threats against Nato and the EU, Russian IT manufacturers could be forced against their will “to attack target systems, or be spied on as a victim of a cyber-operation without its knowledge or as a tool for attacks against its own customers,”

The BSI found no evidence of current problems with Kaspersky products but recommended its anti-virus products were replaced with alternatives – but carefully, to avoid weakening defences.

In response, the firm said the BSI decision was “not based on a technical assessment of Kaspersky products”, and as a private global cyber-security company it “does not have any ties to the Russian or any other government”.

It added: “The security and integrity of our data services and engineering practices have been confirmed by independent third-party assessments.”

But the German warning raised the level of public concern, which the NCSC has sought to address.

“It almost certainly remains the case that nearly all individuals in the UK (and many enterprises) are not going to be targeted by Russian cyber-attack, regardless of whether they use Russian products and services” Mr Levy wrote.

“If your personal laptop uses Kaspersky AV (or other products) it’s highly unlikely to be directly targeted…it’s safe to turn on and use at the moment.”

Ukraine’s national telecoms operator Ukrtelecom is restoring internet services after driving back a major cyber-attack.

The company said it restricted customer access to protect military users and critical infrastructure.

Global internet monitor Netblocks said it was the most severe disruption to affect Ukrtelecom since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started last month.

Netblocks said it saw a collapse in connectivity to 13% of pre-war levels.

However, Ukrainian users on different internet providers, who spoke to the BBC, reported no problems.

Ukrtelecom says it is the country’s biggest provider of fixed internet in terms of geographical coverage, but second after Kyivstar in terms of number of clients.

It told the BBC it had been operating at about 80% of its full coverage because of damage caused by the Russian invasion.

In a statement Ukrtelecom chief executive Yuriy Kurmaz wrote that a powerful enemy cyber attack was carried out on Ukrtelecom’s IT infrastructure.

“In order to protect the critical network infrastructure and not interrupt services to the Armed Forces, other military bodies and users of critical infrastructure, we were forced to temporarily restrict internet access to most private users and business customers,” he added.

Mr Kurmaz said the attack had been successfully repulsed and the provision of services was being gradually resumed.

Yuriy Shchyhol head of Ukraine’s State Service for Special Communication and Information Protection said that its specialists had responded quickly to the situation, and had driven-back the attack.

Before the company revealed details of the incident, Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, told the BBC they had observed users, “falling offline progressively over the course of the day, which indicates that the issue lies not with cabling or interconnections, but rather with central infrastructure at the operator’s data centre. This can indicate a cyber-attack”.

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View original tweet on Twitter
“This also means that the incident has nation-scale impact, reaching beyond the most heated conflict zones which have so far taken the brunt of Ukraine’s network disruptions and outages.”

However, Mr Toker said connectivity had remained available through other mobile networks and providers.

Russia is believed to have hacked US satellite communications provider Viasat on the day of its invasion of Ukraine.

Western intelligence agencies have been investigating the incident and while they have not yet made a public accusation, they believe Russia was behind it.

It appears to be the most significant cyber-attack linked to the conflict so far, affecting military, as well as government, communications.

Overall though, Western officials say Ukraine has proved more resilient to cyber-attacks than many had expected.

Western intelligence agencies are investigating the hacking of Viasat, which provides communications through a network of satellites.

It appears to have been hit by a sophisticated cyber-attack that wiped devices on the day the invasion began.

It also affected other countries in Europe, although not the UK.

Viasat told the BBC that it was replacing some customers’ modems but its core network infrastructure and the satellite itself were not damaged.

“Viasat is actively working with distributors to restore service for those fixed broadband users in Europe impacted by this event,” it said in a statement.

The company did not say who it thought was behind the cyber-attack and said the US government would provide attribution in due course.

Military doctrine
“It looks like the clearest example of spill-over,” said one official.

Western officials believe this was almost certainly the work of Russia but have not yet assembled the evidence to make a public accusation.

“Were it to be ultimately attributed to Russia, it would very much fit with what we expect them to do, which is use their cyber-capability to support their military campaign,” said one Western official.

They believe it fits closely into Russian military doctrine, in which cyber-attacks are used to support specific military objectives – in this case trying to sow confusion by disrupting Ukrainian command and control.

In recent days, US cyber-authorities have warned that they are “aware of possible threats to US and international satellite communication networks”, and America’s FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) have urged providers to improve their security because of the continuing potential risks.

Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is thought to have been behind the Viasat hack, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Other officials also say that the GRU has led in operations against Ukraine.

Limited tech damage
In the initial phases of the Russian invasion, many had predicted large-scale destructive cyber-activity from Moscow.

Russian state hackers linked to the GRU in the past have managed to turn off the power for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. But nothing on this scale was seen.

Western analysts believe there are several reasons for the absence of significant destructive attacks.

Russia believed the government in Kyiv would be toppled quickly and a new pro-Moscow replacement would be put in place.

In this scenario, destroying infrastructure would serve little purpose.

Destructive cyber-attacks take time to prepare and Moscow’s state hackers may also not have had sufficient notice since, like much of the military, they may not have known an invasion was being planned until the last minute.

Another reason is that when it comes to a full military conflict, hard military power can be more reliable in destroying targets such as TV towers than cyber-attacks, which are not always guaranteed to work.

But Western officials caution against the idea that there have not been cyber-attacks. They say that the Ukrainians may simply have been resilient to the attacks that did come their way.

Ukraine resilience
“We have seen broad targeting of Ukrainian networks and systems,” one official said.

“There was a significant amount of intent on the part of Russia to disrupt Ukrainian systems before the invasion,” an official also noted.

So-called “wiper” software was used to target government systems in January and February, just days before the invasion.

But officials say they believe Ukrainian defences held up well against attacks, which came from several Russian state-linked groups.

The experience of previous attacks may also have helped.

“The Russians perhaps helped the Ukrainians get match fit,” an official said.

“Ukraine has done an incredible job of being resilient,” said the official, adding that the country had received extensive support from the West, in terms of both government and private sector.

Both US and UK cyber-intelligence officials have been working closely for a long period with Ukrainian counterparts, including in specific areas such as telecoms.

“That’s an area that they put a significant amount of effort into, and was supported by allies,” officials said.

There has been continued cyber-espionage in the conflict by both sides, officials say, particularly around intercepting communications and trying to locate and target individuals and military formations.

‘Possible activity’
So far, there have also not been major cyber-attacks against the West from Moscow.

One concern had been that Russia could retaliate for Western sanctions by launching cyber-attacks against the West, perhaps unleashing criminal gangs who use ransomware to lock businesses and organisations out of their systems.

The White House did warn this week that it has seen intelligence of possible activity.

However, it is not clear yet whether this is above the normal level of Russian cyber-activity that is happening all the time or whether it is an indication that Russia is preparing for something more serious.

On Thursday, the US Department of Justice and UK Foreign Office also accused Russia’s Security Service, the FSB, of hacking into energy providers between 2012 and 2018.

A loophole allowing drivers to escape punishment for handheld phone use if they are taking a photo or playing a game has closed in Great Britain.

People can now be fined up to £1,000 and receive six points on their licence for scrolling through playlists or taking pictures on a handheld device.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the government was taking a “zero-tolerance approach”.

Devices can still be used hands-free while driving if secured in a cradle.

The law change, which does not apply in Northern Ireland, is an extension of an existing offence which includes making phone calls or sending text messages.

In July 2019, a man overturned a conviction for filming a crash saying he was not using his phone “to communicate”.

Following that ruling two High Court judges criticised the law on using phones while driving, saying it had failed to evolve with the rise of technology.

The Department for Transport (DfT) figures show 17 people were killed and a further 114 were seriously injured in crashes on roads in which a driver using a mobile was a contributory factor.

The DfT said drivers can use their phone to make contactless payments at a drive-through restaurant if the vehicle is stationary.

Mr Shapps said: “I will do everything in my power to keep road users safe, which is why I am taking a zero-tolerance approach to those who decide to risk lives by using their phone behind the wheel.

“I’m ensuring anyone who chooses to break this vital law can face punishment for doing so, and we’ll continue our efforts to ensure our roads remain among the safest in the world.”

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Phones behind the wheel: the law
Using a hand-held mobile phone or sat-nav while driving is illegal
Any hands-free devices should be fully set up before you drive
Police still have the power to stop you if they think you have been distracted
The law still applies if you’re stopped in traffic or queuing at lights
You could get penalty points, a fine and/or a driving ban if you break the law
Source: UK government – read more

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AA president Edmund King said the organisation warmly welcomed the new law and said it wanted using a handheld phone while driving to be “as socially unacceptable as drink driving”.

“This is a much needed toughening of the rules to help make our roads safer,” he said.

He added that “playing” with a phone in cradle would still leave drivers open to prosecutions for careless or dangerous driving.

The government said the change in the law had been introduced after a public consultation found 81% of respondents supported such a move.