O2, once Apple’s exclusive cell phone company reseller of iPhones in the UK, has been caught exposing user phone numbers in the headers sent to websites its customers visit while using its 3G network.
Today’s iOS 5.1 beta 3 makes some interesting references to Siri’s Dictation feature. On both the iPod touch and iPad, a new Dictation text file has appeared under the keyboard settings window. This new document is not present in the same place on the iPhone 4S, suggesting that this reference does indeed foreshadow what’s to come.
The text file outlines iOS Dictation’s privacy details. While Siri Dictation is currently an iPhone 4S-only feature, it’s plausible to assume that Apple is working to bring the feature to other iOS devices.
With the recent controversy surrounding Carrier IQ, U.S. Senator Al Franken has jumped back into the fight for privacy and sent an open letter yesterday to Carrier IQ asking the company to answer a number of questions concerning the company’s key-logger and data logging software. Senator Franken’s letter contains 11 pointed questions mostly asking why the company logs information, what type of information they’re tracking, who receives the information, and how is it used?
Carrier IQ’s software is currently running on millions of smartphones in the U.S. Apple released a statement on Thursday promising to eradicate all traces of Carrier IQ’s software with a new software update. Android manufacturer HTC released a statement today blaming carriers for the inclusion of CarrierIQ on their phones. Samsung also released a similar statement.
Lion has introduced some new yet basic privacy settings. The new settings control how you share your location and collect usage data to send to Apple. Although now it seems to be fairly basic I think it is still important to know what if any apps on your Mac are accessing location services on Mac OS X.
I’ll show you how to find out if they are or not in this tip.
Steve Jobs calls Android a “probe in your pocket” because it spies on users, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher.
The latest Apple patent to surface from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office details another of company’s ingenious little inventions, and suggests future devices could boast privacy screens that prevent curious eyes from gazing upon your tawdry activities while you ride the bus.
As promised, Apple sent V.P. Guy Tribble to Washington to address Senator Al Franken and other stuffy politicians about the so-called LocationGate scandal.
Cupertino’s message? Same as it ever was: we don’t track user locations. Period.
“We do not share customer information with third parties without our customers’ explicit consent. Apple does not track users’ locations. Apple has never done so and has no plans to do so,” said Tribble.
Curiously, while Apple may not track users’ locations, the United States Department of Justice would like mobile providers to start, allowing the Department of Justice to attain records that would “enable law enforcement to identify a suspect’s smartphone based on the IP addresses collected by Web sites that the suspect visited.”
What’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily what’s good for the gander. Apparently, it’s only okay for the government to keep track of what you do with your smartphone, not Apple.
The iPhone tracking issue that’s causing a big privacy stink isn’t new and isn’t really tracking users, says an iOS forensics researcher.
It’s actually a data file that is used internally by the iPhone to do things like geo-tag photos, and it’s been in iOS for a long time (in a different form).
What’s new is a nifty extraction tool called iPhoneTracker that pulls the data off your hard drive and makes a striking map out of it. iPhoneTracker was released this week at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference, causing a huge outcry about privacy and prompting U.S. Senator Al Franken to write to Steve Jobs.
In addition, the file has become more accessible than it used to be because it’s now used by third-party apps that require location data.
“It is not secret, malicious, or hidden,” writes Alex Levinson, an iOS forensics researcher.
Senator Al Franken (D-MN) wants answers about the iPhone’s undisclosed tracking features.
As reported, the iPhone and 3G iPad secretly record your location as you travel around and sync it with your computer. It appears to be a serious violation of privacy. It was first disclosed by security researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warren at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference.
Apple hasn’t yet explained the matter, prompting Sen. Franken to publish an open letter to Steve Jobs demanding answers.
Sen Franken wants to know why Apple is collecting the data; how it is collected; what it is used for; why it isn’t encrypted; if the data is shared; and why consumers aren’t asked before the data is collected.
Here’s the full text of Sen. Franken’s letter to Jobs:
The big news today is all about how Apple has apparently been busy secretly squirreling away data about your movements on your iPhone 4 or GPS-equipped iPad, and storing it in a file on your computer via syncing. Is this a big deal, or business as usual, just a giant tech company doing its thing?
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The latest beta version of Safari now features a do-not-track privacy setting to prevent online advertisers from tracking users as they surf the Web.
The tool has been added to the latest version of Safari in Lion, the upcoming update to OS X expected to go public this summer.
Safari is the third major browser to add a do-not-track setting. It joins Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox include it, but Google’s Chrome does not — yet.
Google, of course, is one of the web’s biggest online advertisers. It’s also worth noting that Apple offers an in-app advertising program called iAds that competes with other forms of advertising, online and off.
Wall Street Journal: Apple Adds Do-Not-Track Tool to New Browser
