Photos on iPhone may be at risk for security breach
The private photos on your phone may not be as private as you think.
Developers of applications for Apple’s mobile devices, along with Apple itself, came under scrutiny this month after reports that some apps were taking people’s address book information without their knowledge.
As it turns out, address books are not the only things up for grabs. Photos are also vulnerable. After a user allows an application on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to have access to location information, the app can copy the user’s entire photo library without any further notification or warning, according to app developers.
It is unclear whether any apps in Apple’s App Store are illicitly copying user photos. Although Apple’s rules do not specifically forbid photo copying, Apple says it screens all apps submitted to the store, a process that should catch nefarious behavior on the part of developers.
But copying address book data was against Apple’s rules, and the company approved many popular apps that collected that information.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment. If you are stupid enough to buy an Apple product, who cares about your security!!!
iPhone secretly tracks user location
A pair of researchers have found that Apple iPhones and iPads track users’ locations and store the data in an unencrypted file on the devices and on owners’ computers.
The data, which appears to have been collected starting with iOS 4, which Apple released last summer, is in a SQLite file on iPhones and iPads with 3G capability, said Pete Warden, the founder of Data Science Toolkit and a former Apple employee, and Alasdair Allan, a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter.
“iOS 4 logs up to 100 locations daily in unencrypted file on iPhone, iPad and syncing computers”
“If you’re not around, someone else can access the information on your home or work computer,” said Cluley.
iPad2 vs. Android Honeycomb
So with the launch of the Apple iPad2 and the Android Honeycomb version of the Motorola Xoom, they can finally be compared. Here are some snippets from the article from JR Raphael.
Quick Analysis: Apple’s iPad 2 matches the competition in terms of hardware basics, but it lags behind in features, flexibility, and customization potential.
What I found impressive is the Xoom’s higher resolution display (10.1 inches at 1280-by-800 vs. 9.7 inches at 1024-by-768); support for expanded storage via MicroSD cards; and support for USB connections. For those of you that will buy one of the tablets with connectivity thru a Sprint, AT&T or Verizon, the Xoom is upgradeable to 4G in the near future, while the iPad 2 is 3G forever.
Android’s strongest advantages, though, come via the innovations found in the Honeycomb operating system — innovations that will be present in all Android 3.0 tablets, not just the Xoom. So as other models become available from multiple manufacturers. In addition to creating a far wider spectrum of prices, that’ll present a far larger choice in size and form factor — something Apple’s single iPad can’t offer
Read the full analysis and come up with your own opinion.