Monday, October 4, 2010

Study Shows Some Android Apps Leak User Data Without Clear Notifications

i thought i would post this article because i have an android phone

and am are currently uninstalling everything.

Something as simple as changing your Android phone’s wallpaper or 
downloading a ringtone could transmit personal data about you, including 
your location, without your knowledge.

Sound farfetched? It’s not: About 15 of 30 randomly selected, popular, 
free Android apps sent sent users’ private information to remote 
advertising servers and two-thirds of the apps handled data in ambiguous 
ways, say researchers.

The researchers at Duke, Intel Labs and Penn State University, created a 
tool called TaintDroid that identifies apps transmitting private data to 
distant locations. TaintDroid monitors how applications access and use 
your location, microphone, camera, phone numbers in your contact list. 
The tool also provides feedback once an app is newly installed, letting 
you know if the app is transmitting data.

“This automatic feedback gives users greater insight into what their 
mobile applications are doing and could help users decide whether they 
should consider uninstalling an app,” says Peter Gilbert, a graduate 
student in computer science at Duke University who’s working on the 
project. The TaintDroid program isn’t publicly available yet. 
 
source 

 

12 comments:

  1. Wow. Crazy to think what information gets out there. I have an iPhone, but I've jailbroken it, and I wonder what that has done to my information...

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  2. Huh, did not know that about the Andriod. Always thought about getting it see how it stacks up from the iPhone personally. Either way as long as it's nothing too drastic like the multimedia message app on iPhone that got hacked sure it won't be that bad.

    http://quarterqwerty.blogspot.com/

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  3. id still rather have an android phone than my iphone but whatever

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  4. Sounds quite intense, I think I'd want to be president for one day just so I can know about the dark secrets of the world 8D

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  5. great post !


    supporting & following you
    take care.

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  6. very interesting

    supporting you.

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  7. Nothing is ever private anymore.

    Btw, you may want to adjust your blog size some of the words had been cut off by the advert, still readable, but just thought I'd say :)

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  8. Doraemon i figured out why that happens. in firefox if you hold ctrl and scroll up and down it increases the page resolution. i use it all the time and it stuffs up how i view other peoples pages as well.

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  9. what would people do with that info?

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  10. HAHA google fail,they eventually gonna take over the world and know everything :(

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