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Lawsuit Claims Top iPhone Games Stole User Data
pdclarry writes "Storm8, a maker of some top iPhone games, allegedly stole users' mobile phone numbers, according to a lawsuit filed on November 4. The suit claims that best-selling games made by Storm8 contained secret code that bypassed safeguards built into the iPhone to prevent the unauthorized snooping of user information. There have been other reports of applications copying personally identifiable customer information in the past. The complaint seeks class-action status."
We have to be on guard for this behavior with computers, why are people surprised that it happens with mobile devices? That brings one question to mind though. Do they not verify the applications that are put up on their store?
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
Getting access to a user's phone number doesn't require a 'secret' code. Any app can do that.
http://blog.timeister.com/2009/06/25/objective-c-get-iphone-number/
They don't have access to the code. Besides, reviewing the code requires non-trivial technical skills. They are checking that apps conform to certain standards. If somebody really wants to plant backdoor into their app then nothing can realy stop them. There must be an explanation for 10000 fart apps in the store. Perhaps some of them have VOIP client built in...
To be fair, given apple's reputation of 'protecting' their users by banning apps for all and sundry stupid reasons, it's only fair to lay the blame on the company for failing to protect against this.
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You can't have the cake and eat it too.
But of course, if it's apple - apparently they can, at least here on
>>What's to stop a bad application from bypassing those safeguards?
/. by appple apologists that that's the way apple protects its users. But apple is actually doing is protecting its pockets by banning applications which takes business away from them or AT&T - while such apps are in the wild - blessed by Apple.
Whatever happened to Apple's policy of babysitting their users by allowing only certain apps? Wouldn't this application exactly the kind of crap users should be protected against?
It's been claimed on
How is using standard, documented, code bypassing safeguards?
NSString *telnum = [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] stringForKey:@"SBFormattedPhoneNumber"];
On most devices - at least those that were activated via iTunes - that will return the phone number. Or null if you're on an iPod Touch.
Okay, so the developer shouldn't have been harvesting this data, and definitely not without protecting it, but I fail to see how this was bypassing safeguards!
skype, opera, flash, and c64 emulators
Encryption wouldn't help here. The API allows access to all kinds of data on the iPhone, which some apps do legitimately require in order to function (for example, a Google Voice-type app would indeed need the user's phone number). Even if the data was encrypted, the iPhone would happily decrypt it and pass it to the app when given the proper API call. The issue here is enforcement. Developers caught doing this kind of thing should be banned from the App Store, and put on some kind of blacklist at Apple so Apple doesn't do further business with them.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
If your phone is jailbroken. I do not know if it protects the user form this company, but it does block information that other companies have been known to try and get. Yet Apple is still trying to convince users that the App store is the only safe place for software.