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Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

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Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#41

Post by oceanstone »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #27
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.

Apparently others have reported concerns as early as 2011: https://forums.motorola.com/posts/64e9971ab3 Amazing that they've been doing it for so long.

The phone from the OP article was released in June of 2011.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#42

Post by oceanstone »

jsnell wrote: post #33
josephpmay wrote: post #22

The author seems perplexed that Motorola is not collecting information from Google or Gmail accounts. This is probably because they already have the information: remember that Motorola is owned by Google.

That theory makes no sense. This phone predates the Google purchase by over a year (and there were probably other phones with the same software even earlier). Also, Google has no plausible use at all for any of this data and misusing it would have huge PR and legal risks. Certainly most of Motoblur got trimmed out with the upgrade to 4.0, and from what I hear completely eliminated with 4.1. Just didn't matter for thi…

This phone predates the Google purchase by 2 months. It was released in June, Google purchased Motorola Mobility in August.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#43

Post by teeja »

Why did it take someone 2 years to spot this????? Doesn't anybody care to watch what's going in/out of their appliances any more?

Furthermore, if this report is true: why aren't there more tools out there so that there are more eyes watching this stuff? Or is everyone just too busy being "social" ??

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#44

Post by jsnell »

oceanstone wrote: post #42
jsnell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory makes no sense. This phone predates the Google purchase by over a year (and there were probably other phones with the same software even earlier). Also, Google has no plausible use at all for any of this data and misusing it would have huge PR and legal risks. Certainly most of Motoblur got trimmed out with the upgrade to 4.0, and from what I hear completely eliminated with 4.1. Just didn't matter for thi…

This phone predates the Google purchase by 2 months. It was released in June, Google purchased Motorola Mobility in August.

That's the date when Google announced that they were intending to buy Motorola, but such an announcement is irrelevant. Until the deal closes, the companies are legally obligated to continue behaving as if nothing has changed. For example in this case there were anti-trust issues in at least China and the US.

According to Wikipedia pages the dates were:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_X: On May 19, 2011, Motorola released the Droid X2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility#Acquisition_b...: The deal received subsequent approval from Chinese authorities and was completed on May 22, 2012.

That's over a year, if barely.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#45

Post by oceanstone »

jsnell wrote: post #44
oceanstone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This phone predates the Google purchase by 2 months. It was released in June, Google purchased Motorola Mobility in August.

That's the date when Google announced that they were intending to buy Motorola, but such an announcement is irrelevant. Until the deal closes, the companies are legally obligated to continue behaving as if nothing has changed. For example in this case there were anti-trust issues in at least China and the US. According to Wikipedia pages the dates were: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_X : On May 19, 2011, Motorola…

Good to know, though I'm sure the announcement came after much research into Motorola Mobility.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#46

Post by [deleted] »

javert wrote: post #11
[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

> Fortunately, I already removed most of those apps when I first got the phone (it was loaded with enough bloatware), Lucky you. I can't remove, for example, my NFL application (which came installed by default), without rooting the phone. I do enough Linux stuff everyday that I really don't want to bother with it on my phone. Honestly, this kind of stuff makes me want to get as far away from engineering as possible.…

[deleted]

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#47

Post by bigiain »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #17
javert wrote: post #10

Wait, am I understanding correctly that your Facebook password (for example) is being shared with Motorola?

Yes, they're taking all of your logins and passwords, including your Google account, and their back end servers are even occasionally logging in with them. "Also interestingly, while testing Picasa and/or Youtube integration, Motorola's methods of authenticating actually tripped Google's suspicious activity alarm. Looking up the source IP in ARIN confirmed the connection was coming from Motorola."

That strikes me as curious - given that Google owns Motorola. I wonder if Facebook's "We detected a login into your account from an unrecognised device" thing gets triggered by this (and if not, is that because Motorola are for some reason attempting to log in to Picasa/YouTube with your credentials but not to Facebook, or whether Facebook are "filtering out" notifications from Motorola's ip addresses?).

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#49

Post by bigiain »

javert wrote: post #11
[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

> Fortunately, I already removed most of those apps when I first got the phone (it was loaded with enough bloatware), Lucky you. I can't remove, for example, my NFL application (which came installed by default), without rooting the phone. I do enough Linux stuff everyday that I really don't want to bother with it on my phone. Honestly, this kind of stuff makes me want to get as far away from engineering as possible.…

Stocks. Newsstand.

Re: Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home

#50

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

smegel wrote: post #38

Isn't that the whole point of the Blur service...it logs into all these social services and combines them to produce a unified presentation? How else could it work?

By using these services' APIs instead of holding onto your credentials?
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