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Barnes & Noble's Latest Tablet Is Running Spyware From Shanghai (linuxjournal.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader emil writes about how ADUPS, an Android "firmware provisioning" company specializing in both big data collection of Android usage and hostile app installation and/or firmware control, has been found pre-loaded on Barnes and Noble's new $50 tablet: ADUPS was recently responsible for data theft on BLU phones and an unsafe version of the ADUPS agent is pre-loaded on the Barnes and Noble BNTV450. ADUPS' press releases claim that Version 5.5 of their agent is safe, but the BNTV450 is running 5.2. The agent is capable of extracting contacts, listing installed apps, and installing new apps with elevated privilege. Azzedine Benameur, director of research at Kryptowire, claims that "owners can expect zero privacy or control while using it."
is watching. And he's not nice...
"owners can expect zero privacy or control while using it."
In other words, much like every "web app" ever. Gmail. Twitter. Instagram. Etc.
The people have spoken. They're cool with having zero privacy or control. That ship fucking SAILED.
Got one of these for my mom (they kick ass compared to Amazon's Fire), but now potentially regretting it. Been keeping an eye out for rooting this bad boy and installing CM, but google searches for "root BNTV450" or "cyanogenmod BNTV450", come up with nothing.
Does that mean I can get a discount on one? I don't care if China reads my books.
Table-ized A.I.
If you're concerned about your privacy, you shouldn't be using a smart phone. Period.
Barnes & Noble is still trying to sell tablets.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
That's not true, I just searched "cyanogenmod BNTV450" and this link is the first result.
Spyware and adware were once universally considered to be malware but there appears to be some exceptions now... Many ad supported mobile apps are known to leak personal data to Ad networks with no protections on how that data or sold. This should be considered spyware but many people are willing to accept it. While the subject of this article is a more extreme example of the spectrum of spyware, it isn't clear where people draw the line. Without strong legal protections, consumers are at the mercy of device manufacturers that are driven by profit, with little interest in looking after their customers privacy. Manufacturers might be embarrassed when the a caught out with poor security practises or when they are spying on users but that is a pretty weak form of protection.
A scary escalation is the move of this sort of software from the mobile device to traditional computing platforms (laptop and desktop). Windows 10 telemetry could, and should, be considered to be spyware. After MS started displaying ads it became adware as well.
When it is law enforcement or security agencies spying on the public there is much more of a reaction than when a company does it.
Is that you, Bill? We all know you'd love to be in on something like this...
And that's why I 've henceforth committed to only buying Nexus or Google-branded devices. My Lenovo tab also has a user experience and a lenovo id process I don't know what they do (I mean, besides reducing battery life on standby by 30%). Never again.
has anyone tried CyanogenMod on it?
I haven't. One of the reasons I have stayed away from cyanogen and rooting until now is that when I have looked at what I can find about this subject, I can't shake off the feeling that this is mostly a bunch of script kiddies, who try to sound like they are cool and with it, but are actually rather dim - Beavis and Butthead trying to get you to blindly download and install something in the hope that it won't brick the device you have paid actual money for. My last, cheap phone still cost something like $600, so I will only start playing around with it like that, if I feel really confident in the guidance and the SW; and that means open source software and good quality documentation. And by good quality documentation I don't mean lots of pictures of how you click on menues, but thorough explanations of what to do, why to do it, and what to do if/when things go wrong.Unless you are very familiar with things, the worst experience you can have is to get stuck halfways with no idea what the hell to do next. That simply must not happen.
it's a feature..
A $600 phone is not a cheap phone.
Yeah, nobody needs you to try CM, lol. Were you expecting someone to argue with you?
It has been done: http://blog.the-ebook-reader.c... CyanogenMod is going by CM7 these days, might be why you didn't find it. Might have to give myself one of these for Xmas...
I'll take one if the company is profitable. Hell, maybe even if it's not -- I could use the tax write-off.
from Langley is Microsoft made... we need Android!
mod parent up!
I second this: a "cheap phone" don't surpasses the US$100 barrier...
In think you have cognitive problems, AC: iOS is not even open-source (what makes cyanogenmod.org possible)...
Because you believe Apple doesn't ever look at all the data they collect about you? That they would never share it with anyone?
At least with Android it's your choice. You can root the phone and decide exactly how much you want going where. Now if you want to actually use any services you'll have to share something, but it's up to you what the trade-off is. On iPhone you have no choice, Apple gets all of it no matter what you do.
There's always cyanogenmod.org...
Note that this is a set of instructions from 2012 and is referring to an older Nook tablet, which was also 7". This article is referring to a new Nook released in the last month.
Schnapple
Sorry, but that is the Nook tablet from 2 years ago. The one we are talking about came out a little more than a month ago.
But if one's data's gonna be exploited either way, why not get it subsidized?
Having experienced bricking a cheap $35 router trying to build a pirate box in the early days of its development, I completely understand what you are saying. I got stuck halfway through the process with no (documented) options for moving forward. The documentation for that project was even better than what I see with the "remake your phone" crowd. It's especially worse when they have you downloading random programs/utilities with little to no explanation as to what is in them and what they do.
I will not do that with my phone unless I am comfortable losing it. I have had success with cheap tablets, but that was in spite of the documentation, not because of it.
"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a targeted advertisement" - Adam Harvey
I guess I just missed the exit...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Apple tells developers what features and technologies they may support in their applications:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/jaxx-...
Do you always agree with the current Apple management?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Cheap comes in all sizes, I suppose. When you are old enough that your children have left to live their own lives, and you look back at nearly 30 years of experience with development, you begin to notice that you always seem to have money left over every month, and after a while you look differently at certain things like the price of a phone. For what I've got for my money, I think $600 was cheap - also considering that I don't buy a new one every few years. There are certainly phones out there that are far more expensive thatn what I would pay; but that goes for anything, really - hotels are my favourite in that respect: to me a cheap, but reasonable hotel would cost about 25 - 30 euro, and would have only just what is needed to stay overnight - that is what I prefer. But I came across one hotel in London where you can get a "room" that costs £18,000 per night. Admittedly, you do get 8 or 12 luxurious bedrooms, exclusive use of a butler, free use of one of the hotel's Rolls Royces (incl chauffeur) etc etc. Seen in that light, a mere £1500 per night probably looks very cheap, but I'm more into the basic options when it comes to accomodation - I can't see why I would stay in a hotel room for any length of time except when sleeping.
Yet, here you are, doing what exactly? ;-)