Slashdot Mirror
Sprint Web Phones Leak Users' Phone Numbers
Anonymous Coward writes: "Tasty Bits From the Technology Front says that Sprint PCS phones leak your phone number when browsing the Web. The unique ID number each phone has to help assure privacy is ... your phone number." (And TBTF is a good read anyhow.)
This is nothing new. I have a Sprint PCS Phone (Samsung 3500, great phone!) and I wrote a little perl script which checks my IMAP mail. While doing that I found lots of resources at phone.com. They have example perl scripts included in their development tools which show you everything your phone gives away.
(If there is interest in the IMAP mail checking script for HDML phones, let me know.)
An international Uber-corporation violating it's privacy policy - DEAR GOD! we must contain these types of problems before they spread, and other companies get the same ideas!!!
LMAO!
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
My experience with Sprint PCS and the 'Wireless Web':
It costs a lot (at least when I used it) about 35 cents a minute, with a minute minimum. I would logon, schlep through the crappy four line text menus only to get to a 'this feature coming soon' message. 35 cents down the drain.
It is almost unusable. Do you want to order a book from Amazon after going 19 levels deep in a text menu, typing your credit card number and address on a numeric keypad? gimme a break.
The features you would want just aren't there. How about a user customizable 'home page'. Quick shortcuts to stock quotes, weather, news briefs, sports scores - nope, have to navigate the menu system to get anywhere. Usability testing - anyone, anyone?
Spring PCS service just sucks period. At least in Chicago. My phone dropped nearly half the calls I made, and failed to ring on incoming calls more times than I care to count.
Just avoid Sprint period. My terrible experience with them just makes me laugh at the irony of their TV adds. 'Crystal Clear'? Can't they be sued for outright lies?
-josh
Imagine if someone tries to hack your server using one of these accounts. You could give him/her a call, and congratulate them on trying...
JB
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
The privacy thing is a bit worrisome, and Sprint should consider identifying a phone to the net using something other than its number. It's just too easy to abuse.
However, that's just common sense and isn't the reason why I'm posting. What stikes me is that a lot of the posts here sound like they're written by people who just don't get it. Web phones are in their infancy - think back to the web in 1992, when every browser was incompatible with all the others and each new release broke pages which worked fine before. That's the way it is with web phones now.
This is new technology, and still has a lot of rough edges as site designers learn how to work within the limitations of the devices. The content designers are going to get better, and the phones themselves are going to improve. The keyboards are always going to be small, as are the displays (although the resolution will improve). Complaining that a phone keypad isn't good for entering lots of text. Well, duh! We'll just have to find a better way, like speech recognition or maybe setting up shortcuts using a full size keyboard and loading them into the phone.
The pricing model sucks right now, but remember the web at 2400bps with time metered usage. We didn't give up on it just because it wasn't perfect. In fact we loved it and the competition soon brought prices down. That's what's going to happen with web phones, and right now is the most fascinating part, seeing all the possibilities and being able to influence how it all turns out.
I guess I'm just surprised to see people on Slashdot slagging off these devices just because they're new, unfamiliar and still a bit clunky. To those people, all I can suggest is that they stick with their nice comfortable rotary dial phone and leave all this new fangled stuff to us nerds who like that sort of thing.
(No, I don't work for Sprint, but I do work with web phones, so maybe I'm biased.)