Slashdot Mirror
HTC Android Smartphone Stores Browsing Screenshots
Mad Hamster writes "Boy Genius Report points out that the HTC Droid Incredible, using the Sense UI, 'will periodically store screenshots of the contents of your web browser.' These shots are stored in such a way that they are not easily deleted. 'They remain when the current browser session is closed, they remain after you clear the browser history, and they remain after a full factory reset,' though there is a way to delete them manually."
I'll venture a guess: I have noticed on my HTC Incredible that the built-in browser displays a small graphical thumbnail of my bookmarked sites, presumably as a user interface enhancement. When scrolling through my bookmarks, I can see a picture of what the page looked like the last time I visited it. My guess is that these pictures are stored and used to generate those thumbnails.
If that is truly the usage, I have no issues whatsoever with the practice. If those pictures are leaving my phone, however, then this is really unacceptable.
This is how the iPhone does its cool animated transitions. People threw a stink when that was first discovered, but I can't remember if Apple resolved it. I know a factory reset does work on the iPhone though :-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Of course it's not erased by a factory reset; the images are saved on the external memory card (microsd)
I'd be really concerned if it WERE erased
It doesn't bother me that you're wrong (at least according to the article), honest mistake and all, but it does bother me that you're modded up for it.
They remain when the current browser session is closed, they remain after you clear the browser history, and they remain after a full factory reset. The JPEG files are saved to a folder named .bookmark_thumb1 which is located within the emmc folder of the phones internal storage (so you would expect a full factory reset to delete them).
yes, it does store the screenshots... for the purpose of having them show up in the Sense UI bookmark widget. on my Hero they are stored on the storage card, on the Incredible they are located on the on-board 6GB partition, http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-browser-bookmark-images-scare explains it in greater detail
The article is 100% incorrect. I have the Incredible and they're stored on the external SD card. The article is a load of FUD from Boy Genius.
From what other people are saying, the directory in question is on the microSD card, which (idiotically) is required to be Microsoft's "FAT32" format...so permissions are not really settable. (You might be able to set the "read only" DOS flag, but I don't know if that'll have any effect.)
(Honestly, why not even UDF is an option instead of FAT32 I have no idea. It's not like the linux kernel - and every modern Windows and Mac OS - doesn't have the ability to support it.)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
How is this different from what Safari does? As I recently discovered when someone gave me their old PC, clearing the cache (which the person did) does not get rid of the page images Safari creates. There were hundreds of them: news stories, many Google searches, emails being read and written, adult content. I imagine Safari creates the images for the frequently used wall it puts up when you create a new window or tab. However the images were the full page (top to bottom, not just a 4:3 thumbnail) and there were low resolution JPG's and full resolution PNG's. What Safari needs the full page, full resolution images for I can only guess. This was nine-ish months ago, so it may be different now.
That is because the cache file is stored on your SD card and not in the phone's internal flash memory. A factory reset does not format your SD card. The BGR article was not thoroughly researched.