Android phones.... -- SAY WHAT YOU WANT, AND HAVE A BALL!!!!!

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Date Posted: - 4:58--pm, ------ 09/30/10 Thu
Author: Sportyangel
Subject: Android phones....

Android phone apps share personal dataBy Suzanne Choney

Think those apps on your Android phone are just for your eyes only? Not so, according to a new study, which found that 15 of 30 popular apps downloaded from the Android Market shared consumers' private information with online advertisers.

Researchers from Intel Labs, Penn State University and Duke University developed a real-time monitoring service called "TaintDroid" that tracked the flow of "privacy-sensitive data" through third-party apps, or applications for smart phones using the Android operating system, increasingly popular among consumers and in the business world.

TaintDroid found that 15 of the 30 apps send users' "geographic location to remote advertisement servers. The study also found that seven of the 30 applications send a unique phone (hardware) identifier and, in some cases, the phone number and SIM card serial number to developers." The researchers said they identified 68 cases of "potentially misused private information" by 20 apps.

"Many of these applications access users' personal data such as location, phone information and usage history to enhance their experience," said Patrick McDaniel, Penn State associate professor, computer science and engineering, in a statement. "But users must trust that applications will only use their privacy-sensitive information in a desirable way."

The researchers said that apps rarely provide privacy policies that clearly state how users' sensitive information will be used, and users have no way of knowing where applications send the information given to them.

Android, developed by Google, is based on Linux, an open-source operating system. Other operating systems used for smart phones, such as Apple's, Research In Motion's BlackBerrys and Windows phones, are more closed in their architecture. There now are between 70,000 and 80,000 free and for-pay apps in the Android Market.

A Google spokesperson said the study should be put in perspective.

"On all computing devices, desktop or mobile, users necessarily entrust at least some of their information to the developer of the application. Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer. We also provide developers with best practices about how to handle user data."

When users install an Android Market app, the spokesperson said, "users see a screen that explains clearly what information the application has permission to access, such as a user's location or contacts. Users must explicitly approve this access in order to continue with the installation, and they may uninstall applications at any time. Any third party code included in an application is bound by these same permissions. We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust."

The researchers said they evaluated the accuracy of TaintDroid "using 30 randomly selected, popular Android applications that use location, camera, or microphone data. TaintDroid correctly flagged 105 instances in which these applications transmitted
tainted data; of the 105, we determined that 37 were clearly legitimate. TaintDroid also revealed that 15 of the 30 applications reported users� locations to remote advertising servers. Seven applications collected the device ID and, in some cases, the phone number and the SIM card serial number. In all, two-thirds of the applications in our study used sensitive data suspiciously."

"This lack of transparency forces users to blindly trust that applications will properly handle private data."

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Replies:

Ha! They'll never figure me out! -- Heretic, -10:54--pm, ------ 09/30/10 Thu
- Really???? -- Sportyangel, -10:45--pm, ------ 10/01/10 Fri
- Don't be so certain. -- sKewL, - 1:48--am, ------ 10/02/10 Sat