Slashdot Mirror
Retrievable iPhone Numbers Raise Privacy Issue
TechnologyResource writes "When a couple of voicemails didn't show up recently, I thought nothing of it until a friend asked me if I'd gotten his message — people just don't call me that often. But the iPhone is indeed a phone, as some users are reportedly being reminded when they get phone calls from the publishers of a free app they've downloaded from the App Store. The application in question, mogoRoad, is a real-time traffic monitoring application. As invasive and despicable as that sounds, it raises another question: how did the company get hold of the contact information for those users? Mogo claims the details were provided by Apple, but Apple doesn't disclose that information to App Store vendors. French site Mac 4 Ever did some digging (scroll down for the English version) and determined it was possible — even easy — for an app to retrieve the phone number of a unit on which it was installed."
as some users are reportedly being reminded when they get phone calls from the publishers of a free app they've downloaded from the App Store.
This was an interesting bit that wasn't explained anywhere in the article. What kind of phone calls they get? Asking for user feedback of the app, marketing other products (maybe on other platforms)? Late night drunk calls?
But for that matter, I've always though that phone apps have access to your number anyway. It just makes sense, same way that PC apps have access to your IP address and other personal data saved on the machine.
Not that it's that bad anyway. Many kind of software need better access to the information to function to function. Answering machine software needs access to the phone book to show who called, or to make custom rules.
I dont think that the issue is really that the phone number and other data are available, but more on abusing said info. With Apple's really closed approach and the app store, it would probably be a good idea to send info about the abuse to Apple directly. Technically the apps require access to information to function.
As a side note, most of us probably think that "real-time traffic monitoring application" refers to internet traffic. I looked it up and it's actually about road traffic, not about internet stuff :)
That's nothing. You can use the Core Location Framework to figure out where they are. So I sold an application to celebrities only that shows them where the paparazzi are, it's called iAvoidPaparazzi. Then iAvoidPaparazzi sends my server their location which gets fed into another application called iMolestCelebs that I sell to tabloids and paparazzi. Then their information comes back to my server and gets fed out to iAvoidPaparazzi. Yeah it took me a few weeks to prime the pump so to speak but once this gets rolling I'm sure I'll make some huge bank off of it ... at least until I get shutdown after I take the heat for a few Princess Dianas. *sigh* A man can't make an honest living these days ...
My work here is dung.
At least one server-based game I was looking at a network capture for was using the phone number as the login/authentication information to their server....rather stupid as it meant that anyone able to guess iPhone phone numbers would be able to hack other users accounts of the game...WHOOPS!
The application in question, mogoRoad, is a real-time traffic monitoring application. As invasive and despicable as that sounds
Wait.. why?
More kdawson FUD?
>> I dont think that the issue is really that the phone number and other data are available
Either you have to be that app developer, or (most possibly) another apple fanboi to come up with _that_ justification.
But don't you worry. Apple will get another pass. This time too.
While it's rather skeevey to not make it clear to users what data your program gathers and uses, it's not clear whether this violates any of Apple's developer agreements.
At least, according to the rules that Apple seems to go by...
What are the chances that mainstream media would ever do this kind of investigative journalism? Or take seriously this kind of investigation done by an individual. Mainstream media like newspapers always claim that they have the upper hand over bloggers because they can do serious investigation.... but concerned people with time on their hands far outnumber journalists. This is a great example of that... and it's very telling that no mainstream news has yet to carry this.
And I think it's serious, because I'm sure this violates a few laws, at least in my country.
iPhone applications can retrieve ALL information from your phonebook including names, addresses, and phone numbers. It does not need your permission either, there is no confirmation popup like with the location functions.
The Ars Technica article linked in the OP says that this applies to jailbroken iPhones. Further, some of the comments to that article say that they weren't successful in replicating on a non-jailbroken device... If you've jailbroken the device, who's to say that you might not get some unintended consequences like this?
An application you installed on a system to be able to access the data on that system.
Now, should the offending app get pulled from the store? I should hope so. I would think that the developer agreement to get on the app store includes something about making proper use of that data.
Here's something you should be worried about, too - any app you install on a computer can access your address book on that computer! In fact, there are public API's to make it easy! OMG!
There's an app for that.
Does anyone understand how the first sentence of the summary is supposed to relate to this story at all?
Good job tagging it "coolstorybro" though, whoever did that. You made me laugh.
Sturgeon was an optimist.
This is a real-life example of how the Android permission model is pretty well thought-out. Any time you install an app from the Market, you're presented with a list of all the hardware and software resources that it utilizes. Installing a tip calculator? When you see that it needs permission to read/write contact data, access your location and have full internet access, some giant red flags should go up. True, you can't tell what exactly the app is actually doing with those powers you've granted it, but it definitely helps highlight potential shenanigans. An Android-style system could have helped identify this app as a potential privacy risk. What, exactly, does a real-time traffic app need my contact info for?
Come on, other phones allow this.
What next? stop an application from accessing the phone book?
I'm sure you usual computer is vulnerable too, what is stopping some software stealing all your email addresses?
As much as this may be on Apple, any good software developer should be asking the user for authority to share/access that information to begin with, specially if it's going to lead to sales calls down the line. Since it looks like mogoRoad didn't (at least there's no mention of this anywhere) it's telling that they really don't care about user privacy.
Apple could probably solve this by encapsulating any data on the iPhone with a framework that forces UI authorization before any app on the iPhone is allowed to access information.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
I was curious if this was possible on other devices. Seems like all the big ones have some API functionality to retrieve similar information:
- http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/8540/Retrieve_phone_number_BB_device_565546_11.jsp Blackberry
- http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2004/11/28/271110.aspx Windows Mobile
- http://www.forum.nokia.com/infocenter/index.jsp?topic=/S60_5th_Edition_Cpp_Developers_Library/GUID-3EB7E846-A29F-4546-B04D-A90B009903EF.html Symbian (while on casual inspection there appears to be no function to retrieve the phone number, you can retrieve the IMEI, and be notified on events such as phone calls, at which point you can retrieve the caller ID as well as the dialed number)
- http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/TelephonyManager.html Android (requires permissions be granted to the app)
Just have the app demand the Location Services to be on.
How and why? Make that a necessary requirement for sending your "friends" "gifts", such as "teddybears", "kittens", "kisses", "pokes" etc.
You know... like on Facebook.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Because you cant install apps from elsewhere than the app store - unless you jailbreak your phone, but that comes with problems too and the fact you have to do it. Windows Mobile is a lot more open in this matter, since you can install your .cab file no matter where it came from, and you're not restricted to the app store.
So what, exactly, is the point of the app store, if the iPhone has a web browser, and the web has all of the apps I've heard of?
Yes, everyone in the entire world uses only the apps that you use. It's inconceivable that other people might use their mobile devices differently than you.
If Apple really did care about your privacy then the functionality just would not exist, and at best it would be a hack. As it stands it's just an undocumented feature.
It's great to rely on 'developer integrity' and all ya' know, but those developers are motivated by a need to generate a return. It's hard for anyone to expect a management team *not* to instruct a development team to extract said information and feed it into a marketing team. I've got two ideas for iPhone applications iWantYourMoney and iWantYourInformation supported by the iPwned you framework.
Seriously people it's like putting a 9 year old in front of a big red button with a sign under it saying 'Do not press this button' and saying to the kid 'Don't touch that button kid'. I'd expect the management teams to be saying 'what other user information can you extract'.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"When a couple of voicemails didn't show up recently, I thought nothing of it until a friend asked me if I'd gotten his message â" people just don't call me that often."
wtf does this have to do with anything?
"But the iPhone is indeed a phone..."
Glad you set that up for us.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Interface. To me that is asking a question akin to "I have a scrolling device and a button, why do I need all these other keys?". I can just scroll to character I want and select it! Plus I don't think you can use all of the corelocation features, or the coregraphic features, or the coreaudio features, with a web app.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Ever used you're web-based service on a plane? Or on the tube? Or in a place without network coverage? Not to mention, that it's a lot faster to use native applications. Also, I've never encountered a web VNC client.
It's well known that apps can detect when they've been pirated on the iPod Touch and iPhone (it's completely detectable, and works 100% since DRM'ed versions should not have the extra entries). In fact, these apps have been known to report back to the host practically everything about the device - UUID and other things (it was posted in one of the forums how to do this, and what you should do if you detect it).
Funny enough, the crackers have also discovered the apps doing this and work around it...
He's referring to web applications, not local applications. But thanks for playing, Bill.
http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters
and try your home zip here
http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters/polluters
how many bloggers are going to amass that kind of data
and which reporting affects people more, and matters more.
OOH-- my ipod tells on me!
frick- my kids have liver disease....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I have written applications on just about every smartphone plaform, and I have never met an API did that did not have the ability to query the phone number of the device. Assuming you have a data plan (in many cases, the only way to get the app in the first place), its a tiny amount of code to post that information to a web page the first time the application runs. Some platforms, such as the Android, do indicate when an application has access to use the Internet, but its not trivial to find out exactly what information is going back and forth.
This issue has always been there, and is no more of a problem on an iPhone than other similar platforms.
Because you can, doesn't mean you should.
You ask the user for their identifying information, if they don't willingly give it, you stop there.
Period. Anything else is a great way to get permanently blacklisted. Seriously stupid mistake.
(Never mind that in North America that solicitation calls on a cellphone are seriously frowned upon)
I've been thinking the same thing for a looong time. Why bother with a map app--point your browser to mapquest. Why bother with search apps--point your browser to google.com. I think this is just the result of great marketing and people being dumb, versus common sense.
If anything, they should make mobile browsers better and support pages better (e.g. Slashdot on mobiles is *awful*). That would solve the whole problem and eliminate the need for this junk.
The only apps I can think of that need to be apps would be something like Pandora or a Myspace. Then again I'm not sure--it could render well on Opera Mobile...
Okay, so applications have access to phone number & address book, but sending that private information back to the application developer crosses the line drawn by the Apple Customer Privacy Policy.
That's cracking - this should qualify as illegal anywhere that has cracking legislation. Also it breaks the in-house rules, so Apple should have yanked it from the App Store already. That's the whole point of App Store - to give them control over what goes on the phone.
This is Apple's problem, and they should press charges while they're at it.
This behavior is explicitly unacceptable. The fact that it has been done is a failing of the app review process. It's also possible that the developers went to great lengths to hide this behavior (such as setting it up to only happen when a particular flag is flipped on on the server so that it wouldn't happen during review processes.) As a registered iphone developer who actually reads his agreement documentation, I can assure you this particular issue is specifically addressed. The application in question must make a best effort to ask the user's permission about divulging data from the device, of any kinda, to a remote server. They also must make a best effort to do so securely.
Any violation of that requirement is grounds for app store rejection. I'll be surprised if this app isn't pulled right away, unless of course, it explicitly asks your permission to do what it's doing, in that case, I'm not at all shocked at slashdot posting a non-news story of an app doing what it says it will do.
I guess we'll see.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
.... and the iPhone fixed that. Is there anything that phone can't do?
Any desktop app can grab your address book info and send it on, too. This is what happens when you use other people's software. It's hardly unique to the iPhone.
if the company states that Apple gives them the information, and that turns out to be untrue... can we get a hearing for deliberate deception or fraud here?
How about a moment of honesty here.
Let me guess, supreme court rulings support the ability of businesses to deceive people.
ugh... we need a revolution.
Virtually EVERY development ecosystem, "smartphone" or not, to include most all cellular handset J2ME implementations have some sort of "sysinfo"/"sys_parameters" API from which you can extract the MDN (number) of the handset on which the application is being run.
If you don't understand WHY, you're too stoopid to comment on this thread..
So it's NOT like some nefarious plan from Apple...
Every mobile platform I've ever used gives applications read-only access to basic phone parameters. There is nothing new here. Knowing your phone number, knowing battery status, knowing if you're in coverage - all useful information. What the developers are doing with it in this case is highly questionable, but it's always there.
Actually manipulating the call progress from an application is a privileged operation, as it should be. I encountered this in a Brew application where I wanted to examine the caller ID on incoming calls. I couldn't programmatically reject the call (privileged!), so I programmed the other end to let the phone ring a couple of times then hang up.
...laura
Two days after I got my iphone and new number, I hadn't given it to a single person or posted it anywhere or updated my contact information anywhere, nobody has my new number. I then downloaded about 20 iphone apps that day. Later that day, and for 2 weeks following, I received about 8 phone calls a day from various online colleges such as everett, AIU, and a slew of other online colleges that googling reveals are scams and the majority of search results are people complaining about getting 8 calls a day from them. I called back one of the times and inquired about my 'account' with them, in which they had both my number, and said I had signed up online to receive these calls as I had submitted I Had interest in being a student there, which I do not and did not. Unless at&t provided my number to this company, one of the iphone apps had reported my number to this service, and that's just not cool. It could be coincidence or perhaps my new number was used by someone previously, which is what I wanted to think, but with all these free iphone apps, It just makes sense that someone would desire to profit from them.
because the iPhone is made with all that extra smug!!
Sent from my iPhone
The problem here is not with the technology, but with the business ethics of the company involved. It's not like discovering the phone numbers of consumers has been outright impossible before, it's merely become simple enough in this particular instance that an unscrupulous company thought it was worth the effort.
Tha't old news people.
Anyone with half a brain has already installed on his jailbreaked iPhone the modified /etc/hosts from i-phone-home.blogspot.com.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
You can remove your phone number from settings / phone / my number. Then when the code tries to read your phone'ss number it gets nil.
Ever used you are web-based service on a plane?
WTF are you talking about? That sentence made no sense whatever.
Free Martian Whores!
Slashdot on mobiles is *awful*
Go through m.google.com and google will re-render it. Unfortunately it still uses up all my phone's memory, and won't work at all on wikipedia.
I guess it's still in beta...
Free Martian Whores!
Well, obviously there's one app that I hadn't seen anywhere else:
the one that mods any denigration of the app store down to "-1 overrated".