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Your Own Mini-Stalker
kashif.ahsan writes "A ComputerWorld article discusses the inherent privacy dangers of carrying around our ubiquitous technological assistants. They're like miniature stalkers, right there in your pocket. 'Camera phones contain all the necessary ingredients for completely invasive stalking: a microphone, camera, personal data on the user, location information, a chat and call history — you name it. And victims carry them everywhere they go. All that's missing is the software that lets stalkers take control ... new software, called snoopware, does just that.'"
Does this make me a celebrity?
/AM/ important on the internet! Woohoo!
My god...then it's true! I
Love how their is only a hypothesis that can scare people with not actual concept that is even possible. This will make billions !!
______________________
how is it possible that free speech has become something that only applies to special interest groups? I for one say fuck that nappy headed nigger al sharpton
And carrying a remote control is like having a little telekinetic friend.
Take out the battery and SIM card, and tape over the camera and microphone when you aren't using it.
So let's get this straight...
- I'm already being spied on by close-circuit cameras planted everywhere short of the public toilet (may be wrong on that one as well)
- Government agencies and their friendly associates already have records of my name, sex, DOB, address, occupation, salary, and other "general statistics"
- Corporate spyware already records my keystrokes, browsing habits, shopping history, porn preferences, dubious sources of owned MP3s, financial credentials, political views, and probably things I don't even know about
And now you are trying to tell me I need to be scared of my 4x3 inch PDA? Right, because OBVIOUSLY that's the only thing threatening my privacy!
That means I have friends!
Isn't the government already doing this?
If someone is willing to violate my personal space and physically take my stuff, I might suggest stalking my filing cabinet instead.
It never moves and has way more juicy data than my latest vacation photos and lunch planning.
Given that all of these appliances are carried voluntarily and have an off switch, this story has no merit at all.
At best it's the basis for a (rather bad and technically unsound) horror story. At worst it helps spread fear and paranoia - as if we didn't have enough real problems to worry about.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The stalkers of the world will always have the upper hand as long as we try and keep the genie in the bottle. We need to make the technology a two-way street and get rid of the myth of privacy. I don't have a problem giving away my personal infomation as long as I know who has access to it and I'm able to get the same back in kind. A battered woman is more empowered by knowing where her abusive ex-husband is at all times or knowing when he accesses information about her than she is by going undercover and into hiding.
Forget Snoopware: What about the actual phone's OS? Proprietary systems like Microsoft's could very well call-home to update the location of the cell-phone. There aren't yet mobile firewalls to prevent internet, wap, or WiFi access by rogue programs, or the OS itself.
This sig left intentionally blank.
Your kids are going to have (at least) two people who are a) their history b) documented better than ever before.
Their kids will have an amazing amount of data from 6 people. 10 generations in there will be a huge mass of mundane details for 2046 people just in their own family tree.
Hopefully someone will invent a better search engine because otherwise it's going to be impossible for them to find the interesting things without being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of rubbish blog posts and bad photos posted to flickr. There is one obvious solution of course...
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
In Japan it's marketed as a feature. You can stalk your kids as they walk from school to home (with various detours into convenience stores to read the manga, etc.). There's an ad with some kid walking home and everywhere he goes there are black hats videoing him and speaking into lapel microphones.
There seems to be this ridiculous notion out there that you and everything about you is some kind of giant secret. Case in point, has anyone gone shopping for car insurance lately? Honestly, the password to your email account is the least of your concerns when compared to the way that credit scoring rapes you on something like that.
If I have:
A) No speeding tickets
B) No DUI convictions
C) No accidents
D) An eviction five years ago
E) A big student loan
then I will have higher insurance rates than an 18-year-old with no credit whatsoever. ZOMG the insurance company is in my credits powning my billz!
Furthermore, has anyone paid taxes lately? We carefully pen or key all of our vitals, all of our earnings and where we earned them, all of our expenditures and where we spent them, our political affiliations, our medical conditions, our contact info, our religion, our blood types, et cetera. Then what? We can but choose between the creepy old letter carrier, Chester, and the creepy old internet. Who gets all this juicy data next, we can only imagine. I promise, it is not good.
Here's a tasty one for you... Homeland security. Had to get that phrase in there for all the conspiracy types on Google. Tracking your library card? To hell with that lame crap... to hear them tell it they are in your fone processin your data anyway.
Speaking of Google... well... Google. Sign in to be mined^W Googled^w convenienced.
There are a Segan Billion Billion data leaks out there, and you and your data don't exactly get to choose where to leak.
So when I see these articles about **DIGITAL DEVICES CONTAIN DATA AND THEY CAN SEE MEEE ZOMG** I tend to seriously consider going back to lighting my farts, just to cover the evidence. Plus, it is truly entertaining when compared to sweating about the spy in my pocket. Fsck my own mini-stalker, where do I get a mini-hooker?
Why bother being paranoid? They're going to get you anyway.
FairTax baby!
I will mug your pretty little arse with the cute iphone thing coming out of your ears. You mark yourself. I oblige. I don't need no stupid snoop. All I need is to pound a little sense into your arse and out pops MY new toy and a future x-mas present for the needy.
A battered woman is best off when related to a real man, a member of a dying breed. We remember how to disappear a guy. Counseling not required. Without a father, father-in-law, brother, cousin, close friend, or godfather in possession of Actual Real Testicles (TM). Sadly, a battered woman is best served with tartar sauce, justice system on the side. A stupid ass phone is a hill of beans unless 911 is dialed on it, and that usually happens when it is too late.
I know what you're getting at with the two-way street bit, but with that location tracking info you'll just be like Sigourney Weaver with the little alien-detecting-PDA. Blip, Blip, Blip, there he is. Difference is that Sigourney had an assault rifle and a handful of jarheads to tend to her woes. Who is gonna be there when Bobby the beater is in the ceiling?
FairTax baby!
>18-year-old
Way to contribute to the very same problem you are complaining of being treated with (prejudice and irrelevant facts being taken into account).
It's sick to see governments repeatedly marginalize young drivers' rights by blanket higher premiums, harder process to get a car, tougher fines for exactly the same offences, and restrictions which don't apply to older drivers. And I'm not talking about "novice" vs "veteran", I'm talking about real age being taken into account (and even if you are above the legal age of majority you still may be considered "young" for these purposes).
Look, just because there are SOME asshole teens who zip by your street in their pimped out Civic doing 160mph with music so loud you see the windshields vibrating, doesn't mean ALL young drives drive this way, and there should not be a blanket prejudice towards all younger drivers.
Seeing you whine for suffering the consequences of people with big loans being put in the same category as bad drivers for insurance purposes, while implying young drivers should get higher premiums just because they are young, is hypocritical at best.
I still can't figure out how the hell the so called "hacker" was able to install the so called "snoopware" into their new phones?? ... were these people soooo stupid to have their Bluetooth turned on, or installing any xyz application sent by a person they don't even know??
...
.. the article seems too far fetched from reality! (IMO)
May be the MMS or SMS they received with the "snoopware" had the title "P0rn"
Apart from this
Therez light! : aHR0cDovL3hrMGRlci53b3JkcHJlc3MuY29t
The real trick is battery life, compression and sending it out in real time.0 42435524
No good getting something on tape and having it 'dropped' in front of you.
One of the good examples of this was at the GOP debate with live net streaming.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=491685820
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If/when you want to be certain of your privacy, the first thing to do is to remove the battery from your cellphone.
You must live in a very strange country. When I make my online tax submission, they don't even need my address (it's already on file). All I have to put in is the tax ID number the govt. sent me, my earnings for the year, tick a few boxes regarding benefits, fill in a couple of boxes regarding allowed deductions and off it goes - works out my tax liability instantly and tells me how much I've over/under-paid.
10 minutes, tops.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Someone mod this guy up. If I had mod points to give you...I would give you all of them because you just served the parent thread his ass on a silver platter.
I can't agree with you more. They also will give an 18 year old female cheaper insurance than an 18 year old male because studies show males are more likely to have wrecks and speed. Did they ever think that maybe guys drive more often than females? Think about this, when you go out with your girlfriend or wife...Who drives more often? That's what I thought.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
Sounds to me like what is happening now in Germany. In a recent article in a renomated german magazine, they describe how some policemen in one state already turn mobiles into a wiretap, even when the mobile appears to be off. The case of the arrest of New-York mafiaguy John Ardito is probably in the same direction: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6140191.html. If you can turn a mobile into a wiretap, and even fake that the mobile is turned off, you most probably can do much more like reading SMS, calendar, etc. That's were our rights are going :(
One more thing is missing: an always-on GPS that appends your location with a timestamp to a log every 5 seconds.
If they want a picture of the inside of my pocket, or a closeup of my temple when I'm using the phone, they're welcome.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I can barely get my own family and friends to download my photos. If some creepo wants them, woo hoo! =E=
Whether you are more likely to have a accident because you are a worse driver or because you drive more often is irrelevant, either way the insurance company will have to pay up. Sure it sucks if you fall into a higher risk group even though you yourself may be a better driver and not likely to have an accident, but it is just the way insurance works.
Insurance premiums are based on how much the insurance company is likely to pay out, that means higher premiums for groups that are likely to cost them more. Of course the insurance companies will want the premiums to be as high as possible so they can make more profits, but if they go too far above their costs there will be another insurance company that will charge lower premiums to get those customers.
No, according to the article it's possible to program a mobile through air (as example they say that some providers do that for maintenance). So police and government can work with the provider to accomplish this.
Alternatively, you have Bluetooth, infrared, WLAN.
So from how i see it, it is technically possible that people can track my position (that's old), hear what i hear (hands-free-mode, article in german magazine "Spiegel 29/07"), see my contacts, my calendar, my photos, and activate my camera (tfa).
That's probably only possible for the government right now (and even that is far too much power over my privacy as i want them to have!) but i guess some company or hacker will figure how to do that with just a laptop or whatever in the future.
You, and the mod who pointed you, are seriously out of touch with the state of digital security in today's world.
You'd have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that there's a group of people protecting you because, with things like the Grecian cell switch rootkit, it's more probable than not that _all_ devices are rk'd to some extent. Sandboxes? Pah--useless. Virtual machines? Pah--the better to slip the rk underneath. Java in a web browser? *snort* Have you read any security lists lately?
Can't, as of yet, there's no (-1, Jackass) mod option.
http://xkcd.com/c225.html
...Aluminum foil sales are skyrocketing. One person, who bought 100kg of aluminum foil, even wrapped his glasses in the stuff while franticly screaming something about miniature camera's.
FTFA:
Most carriers offer a "skip passcode" feature that lets you turn off voice mail password-checking when you call from your cell phone. But because carriers use Caller ID to verify the phone, cell phones "spoofing" another phone's number can get in, enabling hackers to access your voice mail and other features without ever knowing the password.If spoofed CID info allows access to YOUR mobile phone's voice mail, then (IMNSHO) it's time to change carriers!!!
Background: I worked for a specialized PBX company, hardware and software, in the late 1990's. Things may have changed since then, but I have no doubt I'll get educated quickly if that is the case! :-)
The quoted part from the article continues a common misconception. First, some definitions:
Let's try some use cases to put this in perspective:
The premise is this: If I am paying for the call, then I am entitled to see what I am paying for. IIRC, even a call from an unpublished number will appear in my phone bill.
The same concept applies for calls made to a toll-free number (1-800-xxx-xxxx, 1-888-xxx-xxxx, 1-877-xxx-xxxx, etc.)
The call costs nothing for the CALLER, because the CALLEE is paying for the call. The CALLEE is entitled to know what they are paying for; the actual phone number that you call from will appear in their phone bill.
Here's the confusion: For an additional fee, the CALLEE can receive the actual phone number (ANI) transmitted in real time, instead of waiting for their bill to arrive. This affords the CALLEE the ability to do customer-centric things like pre-fetching data about your account based on your phone number. This seems to an ordinary user to be the same as CID, but it is not; the source and veracity of the data is quite different!
OTOH, Even if the carrier uses ANI, a couple minutes' access to the actual phone would still provide ready access to your voice mail, unless this "feature" is deactivated.
They're known to teenagers as 'helicopter parents'.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
that someone might get to see how boring my life really is.
A tech support dwad I used to know called a boner a stalker. This was a while back and it seemed less weird than it would today. Well, kinda anyway. The term 'mini-stalker' instantly reminds me of this guy. "I've just measured it and I've got a mini-stalker!!! About 8cm!!! Woo-hoo! Does anyone need service pack two?"
Made me laugh anyway. . . . . .
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Yep, it's out there, and it's dead easy to do. Flexispy is a particularly insidious program that allows you to do it all, and do your spying on the tapped phone through a pretty web interface! Anyone can download it, and you only need to have the victim's phone a few minutes to install it! Currently available for all Blackberries, Nokia 60, and Windows Mobile phones, and they say that they are adding more all the time. Here's an article about it - where they are openly soliciting someone to test it out and report their results: http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/flexispy-cell-pho ne-tapping-software
Years ago I found a website (soon taken down) that had snoop recordings taken with "back orifice" (a Windows root-kit).
Ever since that, the first thing I do when I get a laptop is open it up and remove the built in microphone.
of worms, rootkits and spyware uh snoopware to the masses?
Not sure if the article was on slashdot or somewhere else, but the FBI listened in on regular conversations while no phone call was happening because they had downloaded software (with a warrent) onto the person's phone allowing them to control it.
His name is Bonzi Buddy.
Look at all the statistics and information on teen driving, the highest risk age group is 16-25. As a 22 year old paying $3000 for 6 months of full coverage I am fine with this, sure it would be great if it was lower but as long as I've got peace of mind I'm ok.
Sometimes they like it, especially if you lick off the batter.
Tip: don't put raw eggs in the batter, because the woman will probably object to being deep fried. (it doesn't hurt to ask though)
It's harder to aquire the needed control, but certainly not impossible. There are places that will help you.
There are so many ways. Be government. Pay off a phone company insider. Set up your own phony phone company even.
Who do you have to notify if you move? Do you have to ask permission?
People move around in the US, enough that it is almost impossible for the government to know your current address.
It's more likely to introduce new 976-style exploits, through autoloading form using "tel:" URIs. The iPhone is not a real smartphone because it has no native API.
The silver lining in the dark cloud of the iPhone's lack of a native API is that there's no mechanism to install any kind of worm, rootkit, or spyware on the device.
But of course it's silly to worry about the iPhone, not when there's so many REAL smartphones out there that actually have the technical capabiilty of supporting the kind of viral ecosystem you're talking about... and have been for several years. We haven't seen a mass flowering of malware for Symbian- Palm- and Windows-powered devices yet, and they're SO much more credible targets for attack.
The insurance companies, like every other corporate company on Earth only care about one thing, money. They know, on average, what type of people wreck more often, and they know that they will earn more money by charging them a higher premium. It is like a bail bond, the higher risk gets the higher bond, even before it has been proven they're guilty of what they're being accused of. Presumed guilty until proven innocent, and in the case of driving, proven innocent for a guy doesn't happen until you've gone without a traffic ticket for 7 years and you're 25 or older.
"I'll be whatever I wanna do!" - Philip J. Fry
I agree completely, and just want to add this: In addition to teens having the higher fines, insurance premiums, etc., its that age group that can barely afford to drive to begin with! You may remember being in high school that driving a (very used) car ate up roughly 75% of your income!
I get the insurance angle (higher risk), but its still ridiculous.
Clipper Chip.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=clipper+chip