Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

beneaththewaves.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 117 posts

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#101

Post by cmpxchg8 »

javert wrote: post #14
soundgecko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any Microsoft product? They shouldn't use any Google product by the same token. Report: Android malware up 614% as smartphone scams go industrial http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/26/android_malware_bloo... From http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee... In at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an…

I completely agree. If you want to keep something secret, do not use Google products. I don't recommend taking the time, but if you were to trawl through all my posts on Hacker News, you'd find that I've said this about Google several times in the past, before the breaking of the NSA scandal.

I do not use Google products either, but you need to add more companies to that. You can't use Facebook, or Yahoo products.

Funnily enough I stopped using Google products because they keep alienating me with their decisions like the Real Names policy or killing Reader. Taking my privacy back is an added bonus.

That also means no Android phone, although FirefoxOS phones look promising.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#103

Post by andyhmltn »

Is this not grounds for a major investigation? I'm not familiar with the law, but I know that there's been a number of cases of people that added RATs to their applications they created to monitor all traffic on that computer and email them passwords.

That's pretty much the exact same thing. Although: 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.'

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#104

Post by noselasd »

dendory wrote: post #5

If true, it's surprising that it took so long for someone to find this. Isn't it trivial to check on what your phone is sending off if you use wifi with a network scanner? With that said I bet this is all for their social networking integration, some engineer thinking it would be cool for them to aggregate all your social data in the cloud, with no concept of the privacy implications.

One of the first things I did. I found HTC Desire always goes and grab http://xtra3.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin on boot up. Couldn't find anything else "suspicious" though.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#105

Post by mwfunk »

D9u wrote: post #40
wfraser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the article? It has nothing to do with EAS or Microsoft; it's Motorola software siphoning pretty much all the user's credentials off to Motorola servers.

Yes, I did read the article in its entirety. Did you? The author mentions ActiveSync more than once. *" What I am going to do as a result of this discovery As of 23 June 2013, I've removed my ActiveSync configuration from the phone, because I can't guarantee that proprietary corporate information isn't being funneled through Motorola's servers. I know that some information (like the name of our ActiveSync server, our…

I'm sorry but as soon as you accuse someone of being a shill or try to dismiss someone's comments because of fanboyism, you lose all credibility for pretty much the next 10 years of your life. There aren't enough downvotes in the world for that crap.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#106

Post by adrinavarro »

skue wrote: post #99
adrinavarro wrote: post #30

This seems related to Motorola's MOTOBLUR system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoblur In all fairness, it seems that the implementation uses a middle server (pretty common in big companies where good engineering isn't a requirement) where log in data is sent, is stored in the users' profile and where timelines and other content is parsed before being sent back to the user's device, in a "dumb" format that the BLUR…

The article has been updated to point out that this model does not use to MotoBlur interface. Apparently having (what looked like) a mostly stock Android interface was an important buying consideration.

I have my doubts. It never stated when it sent the passwords. Maybe it hasn't the UI overlay, but the social apps seem to be closely related to MOTOBLUR.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#107

Post by javert »

xogouyne wrote: post #87
javert wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to a comment about company secrets. I guarantee you a lot more information is being exfiltrated from large US companies via Windows than via Android, and since most businesses are built around Windows, it's a lot harder for them to do anything about it.

Show the proof or stop trolling. What can you gurantee exactly? Op links to article with raw packet data. Suprised mods does not change title to Google. Stop talking out of your ass

How about the billions of dollars of intellectual property that has been stolen from American defense contractors? Do you think that is being stolen from their Windows desktops, or do you think it's being stolen from their cell phones?

The aggressive behavior and language you are using are not welcome or appreciated on Hacker News.

Also, you are coming across as a Microsoft astroturfer. If you are, you're going to be doing more harm to the MS brand than good.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#109

Post by flagnog »

loudmax wrote: post #93
javert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use encryption all the time, and don't use any Microsoft products. All companies that have valuable secrets should already have this policy in place.

... don't use any Microsoft products ... Should be "don't use proprietary software," no? That would apply to Google as well.

and, importantly, check what software you do run. It's only happenstance that the article author found out what was being sent back.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#110

Post by flagnog »

javert wrote: post #14
soundgecko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any Microsoft product? They shouldn't use any Google product by the same token. Report: Android malware up 614% as smartphone scams go industrial http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/26/android_malware_bloo... From http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee... In at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an…

I completely agree. If you want to keep something secret, do not use Google products. I don't recommend taking the time, but if you were to trawl through all my posts on Hacker News, you'd find that I've said this about Google several times in the past, before the breaking of the NSA scandal.

the problem will be that people you interact with use Google or MS products, then the data leakage happens on their side of the conversation.
Post reply on HN