Tag: Mobiles

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Quotations

Phone hacking, for the most part, depends on remote access. Hackers obtain unprotected phone numbers from a variety of sources – Facebook must be a favorite – or by social engineering. PINs, for the most part, are easy to guess. Hacking typically takes place in the legitimate user’s absence.

Unless Apple or Google plans to bar remote access to devices, facial recognition security surely only solves a small part of the problem. Back to the drawing board.

~Kim Davis, from Internet Evolution

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New malware infects millions of Android users

ch3ukl1:

Symantec has identified 13 apps on the Android Market that are all hiding Android. Counterclank, a Trojan horse that steals information, and could also download more files and display ads on the device.

These apps are still available on the Android market, and up to five million handsets could be infected. The popularity in Android will continue to make it a lucrative target. Unless Google does more to prevent such apps appearing, it could mean the start of defection of users to other systems.

Click on above link for more.

For emphasis: up to five million handsets could be infected. That’s it, I’m calling it: Android is the new Windows for security and virus defence. Reminds me of the late 1990s and early 2000s for the number of reported actionable vulnerabilities being reported on an almost daily basis.

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Sign the petition: Respect the privacy of cell phone customers

ACLU:

Thanks to a nationwide ACLU campaign to learn how our cell phones are being used to monitor us, we now know that cell phone service providers keep a staggering amount of data about their customers:

  • Call records up to seven years.
  • Contact information of who you’ve exchanged text messages for up to seven years.
  • Cell tower history — which helps track the movement of your cell phone: all data from July 2008 onward.
  • Copies of paid bills for up to seven years.
  • IP addresses assigned to your device for up to one year.

Tell your cell phone service provider that you demand an explanation of the information that is kept about your account, when and how it is shared with third parties, and an easy way to control how long your private information is kept. Additionally, tell them you demand to be notified if this information is ever lost in a data breach or demanded by the government or anyone else.

If you use AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon, this affects you.

Some of the reasons behind this data aggregation stems from law enforcement demands/expectations. Some stems from the low amount of storage all of this data (effectively) amounts to. Some stems from a need to plot out use patterns and predict growth rates. Some stems from a belief that more data is good data.

Regardless, the ACLU is right: customers should be demanding to know exactly why this data is being retained, the purposes the data is used for, and the parties that the data is shared with. Remember: if it isn’t collected or stored, it can’t be used against you in commercial, civil, or governmental practices.

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Writing

On Cell Phone Bill Comparisons

Canadians often state that they are hurt by high cell phone bills and point to other jurisdictions to insist that other markets enjoy far lower prices. With cost concerns in mind, I suspect we’ll soon see reporting that, on T-Mobile’s UK network, customers can get unlimited Internet access, texts, and calls between T-Mobile users and 2000 minutes to talk with other, non-T-Mobile, customers for just under $57/month.

It should be noted, of course, that ‘unlimited Internet access’ under most T-Mobile plans is quite limited: 500MB of streaming content and upload/downloads of files are included, though browsing, social media (barring uploads and downloads of files), and email is (more or less) ‘unlimited.’

While costs are arguably higher in Canada, doing a close comparative analysis to divine cost structures across jurisdictions is fraught with difficulties, especially when quality of the network and their relative speeds are taken into consideration as well. Still, I’d love to see a default in Canada where long distance across Canada vanishes and basics like voice mail and call display are free to each and every plan. That I pay for such basic services is absolutely shameful and not something you routinely see in the US and UK.