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Apple iPhones allow extraction of deep personal data, researcher finds

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© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014.

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Is anyone surprised at this?

5 ( +7 / -2 )

The way these companies want to impede their users at every turn, and then ask them to sell their soul to use their "services" really gets on my goat sometimes (not a real goat, just an imagined one).

Won an X-Box overseas. Couldn't use it back home without buying some (illegal) "chip". Thanks for the oddly shaped anchor/doorstop Micro$oft.

Have several iBooks on my iPhone that I cannot read on my iPad. Those books are my property as I paid for them. How about a refund Apple? And why am I limited to the number of PCs I can use with my devices? Your App Store "regionalism" drives me nuts too.

As for Google, I sleep really well at night knowing my credit card info is recorded on your "network". Really. But only because it's been cancelled.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

iBackdoor? iSpy? iSurprise!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Google does similar. They fired one of their employees a while back, for showing off how much private stuff he knew about various teens. It's not just the NSA!

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats

It's unclear how widespread Barksdale's abuses were, but in at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source. After accessing the kid's account to retrieve her name and phone number, Barksdale then taunted the boy and threatened to call her.

In other cases involving teens of both sexes, Barksdale exhibited a similar pattern of aggressively violating others' privacy, according to our source. He accessed contact lists and chat transcripts, and in one case quoted from an IM that he'd looked up behind the person's back. (He later apologized to one for retrieving the information without her knowledge.) In another incident, Barksdale unblocked himself from a Gtalk buddy list even though the teen in question had taken steps to cut communications with the Google engineer.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

@turbotsat

Sick stuff. Hope he got some jail time too.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Apple would not be allowed to sell their iPhone with encryption in the US if they did not leave a backdoor for NSA snooping.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Same applies to Android. Let's see what the next iOS will do in this case, with it's new secure data features. Realistically speaking, every average PC is more insecure than that.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Bottom line: if you have something to hide, do not use a smartphone. No matter what brand.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Does this only apply to unlocked iphones?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It says "Apple Employees" could extract such data... from day one I figured they might access to my "personal data". Especially since you can "back up" your phone data using their system. Nothing at this point is totally safe. I trust the employees at Apple to keep my information confidential. They're well paid and it is a great company.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Read through the article and responses, etc., and don't see it being "thoroughly debunked" at all. The 'debunking' author is citing "researchers" she doesn't name or link to. Her claims seem wrong or exaggerated.

When she says "People were told to essentially freak out over iPhones allowing people who know the passcode and pairing information to use the device.People were told to essentially freak out over iPhones allowing people who know the passcode and pairing information to use the device.", she's ignoring that the security footprint of an iPhone, due to all this "diagnostic" info, now includes every device that was ever paired to that iPhone, however weak the security on those devices is.

Zdiarski's response: http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=3506

More details: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-surveillance-zdziarski,news-19189.html

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Total nonsense. This story was already thoroughly debunked before the weekend.

Last weekend, a hacker who's been campaigning to make a point about Apple security by playing fast and loose with the now widely-accepted definition of "backdoor" struck gold when journalists didn't do their homework and erroneously reported a diagnostic mechanism as a nefarious, malfeasant, secret opening to their private data.

Speaking at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York, Jonathan Zdziarski said that Apple’s iOS contains intentionally created access that could be used by governments to spy on iPhone and iPad users to access a user's address book, photos, voicemail and any accounts configured on the device.

As he has been doing since the Snowden documents started making headlines last year, Mr. Zdziarski re-cast Apple's developer diagnostics kit in a new narrative, turning a tool that could probably gain from better user security implementation into a sinister "backdoor."

The "Apple installed backdoors on millions of devices" story is still making headlines, despite the fact that respected security researchers started debunking researcher Jonathan Zdziarski's claims the minute people started tweeting about his HopeX talk on Sunday.

http://www.zdnet.com/the-apple-backdoor-that-wasnt-7000031781/

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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