Android user data? It’s free for the asking…
Back in June, a brute force attack on AT&T’s 3G network yielded more 100,000 iPad user email addresses and little more — the press went nuts. Now, a free wallpaper app for Android phones has sent the phone, subscriber identifier and voicemail numbers of potentially millions of users to China, wow.
Fortune reports that Jackeey Wallpaper, a wallpaper app for Android featuring images from My Little Pony and Star Wars that was downloaded at least 1.1-million times, IS surreptitiously sending user data to a server in China. Exactly who runs that server and for what purpose isn’t know.
Moreover, other apps from Jackeey Wallpaper developer iceskysl@1sters similarly collect and transmit user data. That’s the bad news.
The good news, if you can think of it that way dear Android users, is that the information collected appears to rather benign:
[Jackeey Wallpaper] does not actually access SIM card numbers or voicemail passwords. Instead, the app transmitted the device’s phone number, subscriber identifier and the currently entered voicemail number on the phone.
It had been feared that the app was delivering sensitive information, but that possibility has been obviated by Lookout, the mobile security firm that discovered the breach.
Don’t ask, don’t get…
So, how did this come to pass? Well, first, Jackeey Wallpaper got listed on the Android Marketplace, which means it should have at the very least been given a once over by the folks at Google.
Next, when the app installs it actually asks the user for permission to access phone call data. Yes, the lovelies at iceskysl@1sters had the stones to ask people to voluntary give up potentially sensitive data and were rewarded by users who agreed — it’s part of the app’s EULA.
And, there you have it — Google let an application onto Android Marketplace that asks for user data and then users themselves actually gave their permission. Although it’s true that nothing damaging was revealed and transmitted to China, this incident carries with it the distinctive odor of felons in training…
What’s your take?
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August 26th, 2010
Dude, perhaps you should stay away from the internet, it’s a bad place out there!