Smartphone Apps Spying On You

Posted by admin on 30/Jul/2010 in Security Alert Log | 0 comments

I just came across an interesting article on the India Times web site titled “Smartphone apps are spying on you”. It goes on to explain that a cellphone security firm found many free applications downloaded and used on iPhones and phones running Android pulled sensitive information off the phone and sent the data to a third party.

Here is an excerpt from the article,

Lookout Inc, a cellphone security firm, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple Inc’s iPhone and phones built around Google Inc’s Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.

The data can include full details about users’ contacts, their pictures, text messages and internet and search histories. The third parties can include advertisers and companies that analyze data on users. The information is used by companies to target ads and learn more about their users. The danger, though, is that the data become vulnerable to hacking and use in identity theft if the third party isn’t careful about securing the information.

Lookout found that nearly a quarter of the iPhone apps and almost half the Android apps contained software code that contained those capabilities.

Click here to read the article in full.