Android Faces FTC Probe

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Android being probed again by the FTC? At some point one of these two is going to have to buy the other a ring or something.

It wasn’t the most thrilling news to learn that your Android device's photos could be accessed and remotely stored without your approval. Not surprisingly, the lack of privacy regulations on Android apps has riled advocates to the hilt. Senator Charles Schumer (D) has requested that the Federal Trade Commission look into the photo-app debacle for Android and iOS, sharing his concern over apps’ ability to lift content without users’ knowledge.
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I use a RIM Playbook and when ever I download a new app it warns me what the app will try do do and gives me a choice of whether to allow it or not . Do you get that same warning and choice to allow the app to send that information on other android tablets?
 
Uncle said:
I use a RIM Playbook and when ever I download a new app it warns me what the app will try do do and gives me a choice of whether to allow it or not . Do you get that same warning and choice to allow the app to send that information on other android tablets?
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Read deeper and the laws changed to force the devs to inform the consumers, so this probe is to check if their following the intent of the law.
"California's 2004 Online Privacy Protection Act requires privacy disclosures, but Harris said few mobile developers had paid attention to the law in recent years because of confusion over whether it applied to mobile apps." Now I think I understand why the phone companies don't want the mobiles to be regulated like the land lines. Which pisses me off because most of us are syncing with our home computers and these assholes are uploading that information. Thats no different then putting a rootkit on my home computer,which is against the law, so why not cell phones and these assholes want me to use my phone as a credit card. This is starting to piss me off.
 
Uncle said:
Read deeper and the laws changed to force the devs to inform the consumers, so this probe is to check if their following the intent of the law.
"California's 2004 Online Privacy Protection Act requires privacy disclosures, but Harris said few mobile developers had paid attention to the law in recent years because of confusion over whether it applied to mobile apps." Now I think I understand why the phone companies don't want the mobiles to be regulated like the land lines. Which pisses me off because most of us are syncing with our home computers and these assholes are uploading that information. Thats no different then putting a rootkit on my home computer,which is against the law, so why not cell phones and these assholes want me to use my phone as a credit card. This is starting to piss me off.
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Maybe now when the tinfoils bitch about shit more people will pay attention.
 
I have neutrino ROM on my atrix; anytime I download an app I can configure the privacy settings (phone book, SIM card operator, network, IMEI, etc.)

I'm not sure if stock android has this functionality; needless to say, there's no reason for a free chess game to know all my info.
 
I did find it interesting that the last time I wiped my Epic and formatted the SD card there were still photo's in my gallery. Turns out Google+ snagged a ton of them without me knowing, stored them on their site and never got rid of them even though I never approved of them being there.

Isn't that some shit.
 
bigpimpatl said:
I have neutrino ROM on my atrix; anytime I download an app I can configure the privacy settings (phone book, SIM card operator, network, IMEI, etc.)

I'm not sure if stock android has this functionality; needless to say, there's no reason for a free chess game to know all my info.
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That's not stock Android functionality. The permission revocation was first introduced by the CyanogenMod team in CM7, which Neutrino is based on. :)

In the end this is much ado about nothing. Google and Apple will release fixes and that'll be the end of it. I don't know why these politicians want to get so involved over this unless they're worried that some dirty little secrets may leak out. :eek: ;)
 
Vermillion said:
That's not stock Android functionality. The permission revocation was first introduced by the CyanogenMod team in CM7, which Neutrino is based on. :)

In the end this is much ado about nothing. Google and Apple will release fixes and that'll be the end of it. I don't know why these politicians want to get so involved over this unless they're worried that some dirty little secrets may leak out. :eek: ;)
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What from their phones , like maybe a few snap shots in a hotel room with some underage other then their wife.:D
 
HydroBudz said:
I did find it interesting that the last time I wiped my Epic and formatted the SD card there were still photo's in my gallery. Turns out Google+ snagged a ton of them without me knowing, stored them on their site and never got rid of them even though I never approved of them being there.

Isn't that some shit.
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Pretty sure, you were prompted to sync photos... At least I was when I setup & configured Google Plus.
 
They might want to investigate more that just iOS and Android then. Might as well take a look at Windows and OS X any every other operating system in existence -- programs for those OS's can certainly lift data and transmit it to other parties (see Origin :D).

It's about time applications are sandboxed at the OS level with some sort of virtualization that restricts applications to a need-to-know basis. I thought iOS did this but apparently I am partially wrong.
 
night_2004 said:
They might want to investigate more that just iOS and Android then. Might as well take a look at Windows and OS X any every other operating system in existence -- programs for those OS's can certainly lift data and transmit it to other parties (see Origin :D).

It's about time applications are sandboxed at the OS level with some sort of virtualization that restricts applications to a need-to-know basis. I thought iOS did this but apparently I am partially wrong.
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As far as I know, SELinux is the only real "sandbox at the OS level" out there. It also is said to be still unusably complicated for anything but "set it and leave it" server work (Fedora apparently ships with it, but I don't think you get anything like "sandboxed apps with need-to-know requirements out of the box).

Like the weather, people like to talk about security, but few ever do anything about it.
 
I like that Congress is concerned about this when it comes to technology by have no problem passing laws that walk all over the same thing.
 
night_2004 said:
They might want to investigate more that just iOS and Android then. Might as well take a look at Windows and OS X any every other operating system in existence -- programs for those OS's can certainly lift data and transmit it to other parties (see Origin :D).
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Yup, pretty much. In the case of Android photos are put on the sdcard, which isn't considered a secure location and anything can access it (similar to every hard drive on your computer, lol). It should have been guarded by permissions, yes, but people are treating this like the end of the world when it's more or less the same thing that happens on desktops.

Although I suspect you will notice such an app on your phone much, much quicker thanks to all the carrier data throttling and such...
 
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