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Category: cellphones
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Apple received a patent earlier this year on collecting biometric information of an unauthorized device user. The obvious application is taking a copy of the fingerprint and photo of someone using as stolen smartphone. Note that I have no opinion on whether this is a patentable idea or the patent is valid. Powered by WPeMatico
New research on tracking the location of smart phone users by monitoring power consumption: PowerSpy takes advantage of the fact that a phone’s cellular transmissions use more power to reach a given cell tower the farther it travels from that tower, or when obstacles like buildings or mountains block its signal. That correlation between battery … Read More “Cell Phones Leak Location Information through Power Usage” »
The Intercept has an extraordinary story: the NSA and/or GCHQ hacked into the Dutch SIM card manufacturer Gemalto, stealing the encryption keys for billions of cell phones. People are still trying to figure out exactly what this means, but it seems to mean that the intelligence agencies have access to both voice and data from … Read More “NSA/GCHQ Hacks SIM Card Database and Steals Billions of Keys” »
Earlier this week, we learned that Samsung televisions are eavesdropping on their owners. If you have one of their Internet-connected smart TVs, you can turn on a voice command feature that saves you the trouble of finding the remote, pushing buttons and scrolling through menus. But making that feature work requires the television to listen … Read More “Samsung Television Spies on Viewers” »
It’s called SnoopSnitch: SnoopSnitch is an app for Android devices that analyses your mobile radio traffic to tell if someone is listening in on your phone conversations or tracking your location. Unlike standard antivirus apps, which are designed to combat software intrusions or steal personal info, SnoopSnitch picks up on things like fake mobile base … Read More “Surveillance Detection for Android Phones” »
The Intercept has published an article — based on the Snowden documents — about AURORAGOLD, an NSA surveillance operation against cell phone network operators and standards bodies worldwide. This is not a typical NSA surveillance operation where agents identify the bad guys and spy on them. This is an operation where the NSA spies on … Read More “NSA Hacking of Cell Phone Networks” »
Whatapp is now offering end-to-end message encryption: Whatsapp will integrate the open-source software Textsecure, created by privacy-focused non-profit Open Whisper Systems, which scrambles messages with a cryptographic key that only the user can access and never leaves his or her device. I don’t know the details, but the article talks about perfect forward secrecy. Moxie … Read More “Whatsapp Is Now End-to-End Encrypted” »
Pew Research has released a new survey on American’s perceptions of privacy. The results are pretty much in line with all the other surveys on privacy I’ve read. As Cory Doctorow likes to say, we’ve reached “peak indifference to surveillance.” Powered by WPeMatico
Verizon is tracking the Internet use of its phones by surreptitiously modifying URLs. This is a good description of how it works. Powered by WPeMatico