Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
theregister.co.uk
Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
1–10 of 193 posts
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#2Remember when people were up in arms about how much location data iPhones stored locally?
This is 1000 times worse.
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#3This cant be real right?
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#4This cant be real right?
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#5Remember when people were up in arms about how much location data iPhones stored locally? This is 1000 times worse.
The location data concern was that if anyone got possession of your phone or a copy of your backup, they could discern your entire location history.
With this finding, if someone got possession of your phone, they could apparently discern...nothing. Instead a subset of data is sent to a company contracted by the carriers (or at least one - Sprint) for the purposes of network monitoring/quality monitoring. Of course the carriers already know your location history through time (just as they know every SMS you sent, picture you sent, data you transmitted, voice call you made, etc), whether you're on a smartphone or dumbphone, and everyone knows and is aware of this.
Is this app sending too much data? I guess we'll find out. Is it "1000 times worse" than a forever location log easily exploitable? Not really.
EDIT (while sitting at -4 while the hysterics have their fit of vapours): Moderation in this story has demonstrated to me once and for all that HN is largely populated by ignorant bottom-feeders now. It is a sad state of affairs, and this site desperately needs a turn off moderation from dipshits option for users to toggle.
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#6Is there any evidence that any of this is uploaded to a carrier or app maker? Can any app developer access this log from their app? It seemed essentially that the debug logs just kept a super verbose log for debugging.
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#7Is there any evidence that any of this is uploaded to a carrier or app maker? Can any app developer access this log from their app? It seemed essentially that the debug logs just kept a super verbose log for debugging.
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Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#8It should be noted that there's no evidence (yet) of what is sent to other entities, only what is captured by the software on the device.
This is bad enough, though. But, let's keep our head about this and calmly demand an explanation from HTC. Why them? Because they signed the binaries with their certificate, presumably at the request of carriers, but HTC is the first in line.
And don't believe the response from CarrierIQ. Just prior to that response, they still had very informative high resolution screenshots of their "Device Analyzer" product which showed a scary level of data mining of end user devices. They were probably great eye candy for their customers (carriers), but creepy for anyone valuing their privacy.
I agree that this information is likely for improved QoS, but what can (has) it been mis-used for? Employees can't be trusted, and the government can't be trusted. An end user can't even opt out of it.
Edit: According to Google Image Search, others are mirroring some of the prior shots. Note that nothing is anonymized in the least (nevermind that anonymizing data is practically a myth).
I'll try and tack the URLs below.
http://androidsecuritytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ci...
http://www.xda-developers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/met...
http://androidsecuritytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/me...
http://androidsecuritytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tr...
http://androidsecuritytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CI...
http://androidsecuritytest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/si...
http://www.carrieriq.com/overview/IQInsightDeviceAnalyzer/De...
This one doesn't need to be big to get the jist:
http://www.carrieriq.com/overview/IQInsightServiceAnalyzer/i...
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#9Remember when people were up in arms about how much location data iPhones stored locally? This is 1000 times worse.
The location data concern was that if anyone got possession of your phone or a copy of your backup, they could discern your entire location history. With this finding, if someone got possession of your phone, they could apparently discern...nothing. Instead a subset of data is sent to a company contracted by the carriers (or at least one - Sprint) for the purposes of network monitoring/quality monitoring. Of course t…
I think it is certainly a lot worse. All user data (since it is a keylogger?) being logged and sent to a third party without user knowledge or consent, how is that not worse than just logging user information on the device?
To get access to your location data on the iPhone, someone would have to steal your phone or get into your itunes account. This is happening in the background.
Re: Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps
#10Its much easier to invade privacy in the name of providing a better product than to actually figure out what the customer wants. Collecting huge swaths of data allows product to be tweaked to find a local maximum of profitability. Its an easier and safer alternative than to actually understand one's own product from a consumer perspective.
I fear this is where we're going in all corners of tech. Even moreso because we're already quickly eroding at any expectation that one should provide privacy to their users. All the while users are ignorant enough about tech in general and have no idea that their privacy can and is flying out the door. Software exists in such a way that the lay user can't ever understand the boundaries or capabilities of software to do things that they are completely unaware of. The numbers of people who do understand what is going on is so small that they are neither a significant portion of the market, nor a "reasonable person" in the eyes of courts.
Privacy will be dead before anyone even notices.