Apps are tracking and reporting on you.

[Heretic]

Amazing what we put up with from private companies but throw a fit if the government does the very same thing. Seems your smart phone apps for IPhone and Android are transmitting your device ID, your location, your real name and along with a host other information as well as your current location to online-tracking companies to build detailed dossiers of users.

Guess it's time to go back to the can and strings.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 74602.html

[Skyalmian]

This is unfortunately not very surprising.
Off-topic but similarly, I wonder how much and what Google is doing with all the information they collect...

[roid]

This article is alarming, and confusing or perhaps just poorly written. It seems to contradict itself.

Although according to the article's graphical tables MOST apps transmit the user's location, the article says \"One iPhone app, Pumpkin Maker (a pumpkin-carving game), transmits location to an ad network without asking permission\". Note it says only ONE. It's saying that ONLY ONE app transmits your user location without your approval.

But then later on in the same paragraph it again says \"Smartphone users are all but powerless to limit the tracking. With few exceptions, app users can't \"opt out\" of phone tracking\"

[Avder]

Crap like this makes me glad I'm still waiting to bother with getting a cell phone.

All I want when I get a cell phone is decent voice quality, unlimited text and web, and the ability to store my whole damned music collection in its built in storage, for a price that doesn't require me to sell an organ.

Maybe by the time that becomes a reality, truly open source phones will be around.

[Krom]

Hello and welcome to Last Year. This has been going on for a long time now.

[Spidey]

This is one of the reasons I still have my SGH-T209.

[null0010]

This is one of the reasons (the other is price) that I refuse to get a smartphone.

[Isaac]

Non-issue. Good smartphones have firewalls and let the user control outgoing data for each application.

[Avder]

Non-issue. Good smartphones have firewalls and let the user control outgoing data for each application.

Two points tho:

1. Users are idiots.

2. A good number of smartphones have apps and other junk on them that the user can not get rid of no matter how they try. It is not that much of a stretch to think that something like that is doing tracking.

[Cuda68]

Oh heck yea, for a long time now. If it was not for data mining I would be out of work.

[Gooberman]

There are four times in my life where technology has amazed me.

1. My first Commador 64
2. First time I dial'ed up and played co-op doom2 with my best friend.
3. First time I connected to the internet wirelessly.
4. Smart phones.

Yup, they are trendy/expensive. But its my ipod/GPS/phone/digital camera/portable storage device, and can scan bar codes to price check things, all in one. It has also made e-mail more like text messaging.

Yes, most of the free aps (and some none free) report your location and personal information....it just reinforces the saying that there is no free lunch.

So long as I am free to turn it off and leave it at home, I see no problem with companies doing this.

If you are bothered with people knowing where you are, don't carry in your pocket something that radiates your location.

[Will Robinson]

I'm with Gooberman, Smart phones rule.
I used to carry a pager, a cell phone, a walkie talkie and a laptop to run my business and still had to find a hotspot to access the internet.
Now I just carry an iPhone.
I'm smart enough to not use it to call in a ransom demand to the Whitehouse...'I've got your wife and I demand you take her back!! how much will it cost me?!?' ...so they can track me all they want.

[roid]

Non-issue. Good smartphones have firewalls and let the user control outgoing data for each application.

can you name some of these good smartphones that are impervious to spyware?

Remember there's a lot of phones, but they all use one of only a few existing phone OSes.
Saying one of these phones is impervious to spyware is like saying your new stock DELL PC is impervious to spyware even though it's running Win7 just like every other DELL PC. ie: you lie.

[Blaze]

Crap like this makes me glad I'm still waiting to bother with getting a cell phone.

I still wish I didn't have one. Whatever happened to the days when no one could bother you until you got home and checked your answering machine?

[SirWinner]

It doesn't take much to secretly pass the information from any device or PC back to say your private web site via FTP. If the internet connection is down, no worries... just send the data later.

The problem is beyond just preventing software piracy... it now pirates your private information and sends that back.

Keylogger programs do the same thing.

Buyer beware seems to apply here!

...

As for me, my cell phone is ONLY a phone... I'd rather have several e-mails to read than 100's of meaningless text messages on my phone.

Wheeeeeee!

[Isaac]

Non-issue. Good smartphones have firewalls and let the user control outgoing data for each application.

can you name some of these good smartphones that are impervious to spyware?

Remember there's a lot of phones, but they all use one of only a few existing phone OSes.
Saying one of these phones is impervious to spyware is like saying your new stock DELL PC is impervious to spyware even though it's running Win7 just like every other DELL PC. ie: you lie.

Sorry I missed your post.

The Blackberry OS has a firewall and, for internal protection, gives different access rights to each app, which the user can change. Even with restrictions released Java apps still have limitations. If the OS doesn't like the app for any reason it just won't execute. As a result Blackberry owners are pushed to buying apps at premium prices.

On the other hand I wish the Blackberry had fewer restrictions like the Android or the mobile Windows OS. I don't think I'd ever write any software for a Blackberry phone. RIM seems to have gone out of their way to make hard to run open source software.

[Behemoth]

Not a surprise and not as scary as it used to seem, the govt. spies on everyone regardless of if you're worried about it or not.
I do have to say however, that it's a no brainer, privacy will always be worth more than having a phone that can unfold and you could sleep in it, or whatever else it could possibly do.

[Isaac]

Not a surprise and not as scary as it used to seem, the govt. spies on everyone regardless of if you're worried about it or not.

The United States government hardly has enough money to fix roads. It's fiscally impossible for it to watch everyone as you claim.

[Behemoth]

lol, i won't even reply to that.

[Isaac]

lol, i won't even reply to that.

YES YOU DID!!! IT'S RIGHT THERE!!!!!

edit;
And I'm still right. pwnd / thread

[Sergeant Thorne]

Isaac in the last few years the federal government has employed 200,000+ TSA workers. Let's assume an 8-hour day at $10/hr, average. 200,000 x 10 x 8 = $16,000,000 per Day = $80,000,000 per 5-Day Week = $4,160,000,000 per Year. Personally I think that's a conservative estimate.

The federal government also funds 1000+ (I think 1100 was the number I heard) military bases around the world.

And it's obvious from recent history that anything to do with security or military just gets put on the tax-payers' tab. They'll find the money for any initiative they can justify.

[Behemoth]

The government spends money that doesn't exist isaac, how else do you explian our multi trillion dollar national debt?

[Isaac]

Well that makes sense. edit: I already knew that. Not sure why I posted originally. /brain fart