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ACLU's Mobile Privacy Developer Challenge

Posted by Soulskill on from the apps-that-delete-facebook-apps dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Privacy groups announced a mobile privacy developer challenge yesterday. The competition, Develop for Privacy, challenges mobile app developers to create tools that help ordinary mobile device users understand and protect their privacy. It's sponsored by the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of Washington, and the Tor Project, with the assistance of the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner's Office. Submission deadline is May 31, 2011. The winner will be announced in August 2011 at an event in Las Vegas, coinciding with the DEFCON and Black Hat security conferences."

2 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Not Gonna Work by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unfortunately there are people involved in the ownership of these mobile devices (aka users). When users are involved security is always inconvenient, an obstacle or even a nuisance. People want security via magic, not actual implementation of secure and common sense practices.

    1. Re:Not Gonna Work by 16384 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately there are people involved in the ownership of these mobile devices [...]

      Unfortunately you don't really own a smartphone, even one that isn't tied down to a contract and paid big bucks to carry around. The phone doesn't obey to you instead obeys to the manufacturer, to google, to the app developers, etc. It keeps sipping information and reporting it back to headquarters, and it's blocked in such a way that bypassing that is not practical.

      I was surprised to find that android phones *require* a google account, or that a iPod Touch requires being connected with iTunes to start. A HTC Desire comes with lots of widgets running in the background that you can't turn off (and it's even worse on Android 2.2, Froyo) and the terms of service clearly states they may collect data on you (duh!). Many apps requires far more permissions than they should, so after a while you either give up and ignore the permission requests or don't use any of them.

      Mobile privacy? Is there such a thing?