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UK Mobile Operator O2 Leaks MMS Photos

Posted by Soulskill on from the like-a-sieve dept.

Anonymous Hero writes "UK Mobile Operator O2 allows its customers to send Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) photos to email recipients by way of a web interface. The URLs published by the MMS-to-email application are not authenticated, so a simple Google search reveals hundreds, if not thousands of private photos." Reader ttul points out similar coverage of this issue at InformationWeek.

9 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Tomorrow's news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Under pressure from the NY attorney general, major telecoms have agreed to permanently stop offering MMS service.

    1. Re:Tomorrow's news by William+Robinson · · Score: 5, Funny
      Imagine, Judge being presented his own private MMS as evidence.

      Reminds me of a joke:

      A small town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial -- a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?"

      She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a rising big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you."

      The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?"

      She again replied, "Why, yes I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He's lazy, bigoted, he has a drinking problem. The man can't build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him."

      At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, "If either of you asks her if she knows me, you'll be in jail for contempt of court!"

      --
      hilarious
  2. All your creativity are belong to google.com by AHuxley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I blame web 2.0 and young people.
    Back in the good old days you would have used safe ftp.
    ftp never hurt anyone.
    I do harbour dreams of being a Tor node operator.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. Disappointing by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 5, Funny

    Arr, not a looker in the bunch!

    --
    Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
    1. Re:Disappointing by GradiusCVK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Funny it includes the sender's phone number... oughta MMS everyone back and tell them to start taking some photos of hot chicks.
      Presents an interesting new way for us Slashdotters to meet girls...

  4. Of course that is not all. by lantastik · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google can dig up all kinds of wonderful information.

  5. Problem solved! by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Funny

    Heartfelt thanks to all the people of slashdot for mounting a DDOS attack on our servers.

    The O2 team.

    --
    No sig today...
  6. Not as bad as it sounds by srjh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Try searching for each of those 16-character IDs, and you'll see that each has already been posted publically, and most seem to be from just the one user. Which makes sense, if Google managed to index them in the first place.

    Sure, 02 should have taken steps to avoid being indexed, but they aren't responsible for leaking the photos.

    And It would be quite easy to write a script to try various combinations of 16 hex digits to try and randomly view a photo but depending on how many photos are being hosted the hit rate could be quite low.? Yeah, seeing as there are about 10^19 combinations, the hit rate would be fairly low. Did the author seriously consider this to be flaw?

  7. what is wrong with you people? by speedtux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Worse still, the majority of the images taken on cameras turns out to be children. Ironically, O2 has a website dedicated to "Protect Our Children", well a good first step would be to avoid leaking customer photos.

    What bullshit idea is it that pictures of children need to be removed from the world? If you look at the history of photography, pictures of children have always been an important part of street photography, portraits, and artistic photography. In the US and many other places, it's legal to take pictures of children, even without permission of their parents. There are many pictures of children on Flickr and elsewhere.

    There is no evidence that pictures of children place them at risk. Can we please stop and reverse this meme that there is anything wrong with taking pictures of children?

    I don't really give a damn about pictures of children per se, but demonizing legitimate and legal content is a serious threat to free speech and democracy.