Matt Honan, the Wired writer who had his digital identity stolen in a harrowing cyberattack last year, is back with another chilling article about yet another technology failing to protect us: this time it’s our beloved smartphones. More specifically, it’s the ones we’ve left behind, donated or possibly even sold via eBay, when we upgraded to a newer mobile device. The problem? Even though we may “wipe” the phones, the process may still leave enough information behind for the wiped phone to reveal sensitive information about their owners, including where the phone has been (geographically), what websites have been visited, and even phone numbers, addresses and other confidential data we thought erased.
What this means for you:
Depending on the type of phone you are discarding, and how it is wiped, this may or may not be an issue for you. For example, iPhones after the 3G mentioned in the article are encrypted by default, and if “reset” properly, the encryption key is destroyed, rendering any data on the phone unreadable, even if it is recovered. Most large organizations with a savvy IT department will only allow smartphones to access corporate email and files after your phone has been configured with proper security settings, up to and including an encrypted partition to store your email and any files you might access from the corporate network. Most Android phones should be able to encrypt all data (check “Settings -> Security”) depending on version of Android your phone is running, providing the same type of protection that Apple has on its late-model iPhones.
I can hear you saying, “I don’t have any data on my phone that is sensitive,” and unless you are 100% sure of this, always assume there is something on your phone you don’t want untrustworthy eyes seeing. Even older flip-phones have phone numbers, addresses and other data you might not want to share with a stranger. If you are at all in doubt, hold on to that phone until you can talk to a professional about wiping it securely. If you don’t plan on letting the phone have a second life through eBay or donation, take it to an eWaste facility or event that offers secure destruction. This process renders the phone (and any electronic device, like a hard drive) down to its basic metallic components, completely destroying any data stored in any component. Don’t have access to such a process? Drop your phone into a bowl of water for a day or, as the Wired article suggests, take a hammer to it (wear proper safety equipment please!) before disposing of it through a proper eWaste avenue. This isn’t a guaranteed method, but it will take a dedicated effort that most data scavengers will bypass in favor of the next discarded smartphone that will be an easier mark.
Classic car enthusiasts have bemoaned the industry’s shift towards computerizing every aspect of automotive operations, especially things that in the past could be tuned and maintained with a set of tools and a little elbow grease. The rise of technologies like fuel-injection, ABS and automatic transmissions have made our cars some of the most sophisticated electronics we use on a regular basis, aside from our smart phones and computers, and like them, sometimes we know very little about how to keep them operating at top efficiency. A new company, Automatic, aims to change that with a small device called the “Automatic Link” which plugs into your car’s ODB-II port – the same one auto shops use to run diagnostics on any car made after 1996.
The device connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth, and using telemetric data gathered by your car’s own onboard computers, GPS data tracked on your phone, and (presumably) some powerful cloud-based data analysis, will analyze your driving habits and start to put together recommendations on how to drive more safely and efficiently, as well as providing historical analysis of all previous travels in your vehicle including time spent on the road, distance traveled, and average fuel-efficiency. If it spots trouble with one of your car’s systems, instead of flashing a cryptic message code that you have to dig out of your car’s instruction manual, it will again leverage the internet to provide more meaningful clues as to what might be wrong, and then show you nearby highly-rated auto mechanics that can help.
What this means for you:
The Automatic Link isn’t shipping until May of this year, so aside from media hype, all we have to go on are the promises of Automatic’s website. At the moment, it’s only being launched for iPhones, so if you aren’t among the Apple faithful, you are out of luck at the moment. This device is following a growing trend where we are tying larger portions of our lives to our smartphones, which, as I’m hoping you realize, is a double-edged sword. There are a great many benefits to be gained from devices such as this – but at what cost to your personal privacy. No doubt, Automatic has plans for the massive amount of data these devices can gather, and I imagine the demographic information contained within has any location-based business salivating at the prospects.
You might not have realized this, but in 2012, US Copyright Office let an exception to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) expire that suddenly made it illegal to unlock a cellphone you owned, for the purposes of using it with a different carrier. Passed in 1998, the DMCA covers many areas of modern technology, but the exception essentially allowed consumers to unlock phones like the Apple iPhone themselves, as opposed to purchasing a (much more expensive) unlocked phone or asking/paying the carrier to unlock the phone for you after you’ve paid for the phone through a subsidized contract. Though the exception lapsed late last year, the Whitehouse and the FCC have both issued statements urging Congress to legalize unlocking.
What this means for you:
In the US, unlocking your smartphone doesn’t have quite the same value as it does in other parts of the world, primarily because the two largest carriers operate networks that use two different technologies that are not found in any one phone. For example, if you had an AT&T iPhone, you can’t unlock it and move to Verizon, because the actual hardware will only work on GSM networks (Verizon is a CDMA-based network) but you could use it on T-Mobile’s network. The carriers aren’t really interested in seeing the exception renewed, primarily because it narrow’s consumer choice and “locks” unknowning customer with technology that, while simple to crack, is technically illegal to actually do without the carrier’s permission.
The issue rarely surfaces for most consumers anyways, as the carriers offer “free” or heavily discounted phones (with a multi-year contract, of course!) to “new” customers, so most opt to get something shiny and new, versus unlocking their 2-year old phone. The issue here is really more centered around protection of consumer rights and the fact that if you own something, you should be able to do whatever you want with it as long as it isn’t impacting the well-being of others. Unfortunately, the Whitehouse and the FCC can’t do anything about the DMCA or renewing the exception because the Copyright Office is governed by Congress. And we all know how productive they’ve been lately.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Industry analysts are taking off their rose-colored glasses after examining the results of BlackBerry’s largely lackluster launch of their OS 10 platform. Original estimates had the newly renamed company (formerly Research In Motion) selling as many as 1.75 million new phones following the Jan 30 debut. Using words like “soft launch” and “modest demand”, analysts are now revising their estimates down by as much as 83%, putting BlackBerry’s comeback into serious doubt.
What this means for you:
It’s probably too early to call it, but BlackBerry really needed a big splash with the 10 launch and to keep surging forward with momentum to stay on par with upcoming anticipated Samsung and Apple launches on tap for Summer. Early reviews indicate that version 10 phones have caught up with the competition, but the technology hasn’t leapfrogged the competition, something BlackBerry really needs to do to gain any footing in this market, as they can’t outspend Google, Apple or even Samsung. If your company is heavily invested in BlackBerry and still supports it for corporate communications, you can’t go wrong with a Z10 or Q10, as long as your IT department has committed to keeping their BB infrastructure current. If they seem even the littlest bit wishy-washy on that subject, or they already support Android and iOS devices, you’ll make a safer investment in another platform.
If Forbes is writing about it, then it must be entering the mainstream, right? According to their calculations, the latest jailbreak for the iPhone’s iOS 6 has been installed over 7 million times since its release last week, which is roughly equivalent to about 2% of the overall iPhone population, and that number is likely to grow over time to 10% according to Jay Freeman, the administrator of the “unofficial” jailbroken iPhone app store, Cydia.
“Jailbreaking” (similar to “rooting” in the Android world) is basically a process that removes the restriction of installing apps from a third-party app store not controlled by Apple. Apps found at Cydia commonly enable iPhones to do things that normally wouldn’t be possible under Apple’s strict programming and content guidelines, such as (before iOS 6) multitasking or something as simple as setting Google’s Map app as the default mapping application when you click on addresses on your iPhone.
What this means for you:
The explosion in popularity of smartphones and tablets has infused cultures everywhere with elements of hacking and tinkering as people become more comfortable with customizing the phone rather than just using “as directed”, right up to the point where they hit the limitations of the device, and in the case of the iPhone, the (sometimes arbitrary) limits set by Apple. Over the years, jailbreaking, once considered arcane and only for the most foolhardy hacker, has now become something simple enough that you could walk your grandmother through the process.
Let’s be real – jailbreaking your grandmother’s iPad is probably not necessary, but if she could do it, then surely you can do it. And if it means being able to finally get rid of Apple’s miserable Maps application and return to trusty Google Maps once and for all, jailbreaking starts to look a lot more inviting. In the end, jailbreaking is about deciding whether Apple’s vision for how you should use your phone or tablet meets your needs (which it does for the majority of Apple customers) or whether you are really ready to “think different.”
Caveat: Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad, while legal in the USA, will void your warranty according to Apple.
According to The Verge, Google notified Microsoft of its plans to discontinue support for ActiveSync on the Gmail platform last year, and has recently notified Microsoft that the cut-off is coming on Jan 30, despite Microsoft’s efforts to get a 6-month extension from Google. ActiveSync is widely used to sync calendar and contact data from Gmail to Windows and iOS devices. Microsoft has noted that the Windows Phone OS will support CardDAV and CalDAV, which are the protocols used currently for synching on Android devices, in a future update of Windows Phone OS, but the update release data has not been announced yet.
What this means for you:
If you use Gmail as your primary calendar and contact management system, and you are syncing contacts and calendar data to a Windows Phone or an iPhone, you will lose the ability to sync up your data between phone and the cloud for an unknown length of time once Google drops support for ActiveSync – Gizmodo projects it could be as long as six months time. If you need this functionality, start considering alternatives ASAP!
Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the once-dominant BlackBerry platform, has announced the launch date of its BlackBerry 10 phones to be January 30 by all the major US carriers except Sprint, who has promised a BB10 phone later in the year. Many analysts believe that this launch is the last-ditch effort by RIM to regain relevance in an industry dominated by iPhone and Android devices, and just as many have already counted them out.
What this means for you:
If you are one of the dwindling BlackBerry faithful, there is a lot to whet your (by now, monstrous) appetite: the new RIM OS modern look and all new code-base (supposedly no carry-over code from older RIM OS’s) will hopefully update BlackBerry’s staid, corporate image. However, the new BB10 phones have multiple strikes against them:
- Developers for the “staple” apps (Facebook, Google, Netflix, etc) will undoubtedly develop versions of their omnipresent apps because they can fund the development off the backs of their profitable iOS and Android counterparts, but don’t expect surprise hits from indie developers appearing on BB10 first – there just isn’t a large enough userbase to warrant the investment gamble. RIM has sponsored some recent events to kickstart development, but proof will be in whether BB10’s launch will be a repeat of Microsoft’s Windows Phone lackluster debut.
- BlackBerry’s current infrastructure has some serious redudancy flaws that has led to some titanic outages. Once viewed as the most reliable platform in the early days of smartphones, the series of recent, widespread outages has severely tarnished RIM’s image.
- RIM has been lapped by Apple and Google, OS-wise, at least 2 to 3 times now. RIM is just launching a competitor to phone OS’s that were developed years ago. Unless this horse can fly, there is no way BB10 is catching iOS6 or Jelly Bean in this race.
I suspect that RIM isn’t quite done – they still have a nice chunk of the market, but they aren’t going to supplant iPhones or Androids anytime soon.
Security researcher Bogdan Calin has reportedly devised a new cyberattack method that can compromise certain types of routers merely by a local user opening an email on their iPhone, iPod or Mac. This new vector takes advantage of two common security weaknesses: the default mail client settings on Apple devices that loads remote images automatically, as well as default or weak admin passwords on consumer-grade routers that are often found in residences and small businesses. In a nutshell, the attack works by taking advantage of your router’s ability to be managed via web-browser by opening dozens of hidden pages with login and setting changes, each firing off in turn until one of them affects the change.
All of this happens in the blink of an eye, and because the changes don’t have to be destructive immediately, the user would not know they had just compromised their own network. These settings could include changing your DNS settings to servers that a hacker controls, allowing them to misdirect anyone on that network to sites that can further hijack computers. For example, typing “Google.com” would no longer take you to the actual Google website, but could instead send you to a counterfeit site that, for all intents and purposes, looks very similar to Google’s own site, and from there, could lure unsuspecting users into further compromising decisions.
What this means for you:
As of now, this particular attack only works on specific types of routers, and relies on the fact that many people have never set their router password to something other than the default it shipped with from the factory. Despite Mr. Calin’s warning, Apple is not planning to address the settings exploit, and has instead suggested that users can turn off the automatic loading of remote images in emails (the default setting in Android mail clients) if they wish additional security, but with the downside that all images, legitimate or not, would be prevented from loading. The simplest solution, of course, is to set your router password to something other than the default, and preferably one that is hard to guess or brute-force.
Image courtesy of Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
According to analyst IDC, Android-based smartphones account for three out of every 4 phones sold worldwide in Q3 2012. As anticipated, this expansion of the market has also prompted a surge in fraudulent apps being developed and installed on phones. Security firm F-Secure reports a 10X increase in the number of distinct malware apps detected in the marketplace, finding over 50k apps this quarter alone. Most of these apps appear to be making their debut on 3rd party apps stores outside of the US looser security standards allow the malware to slip into the marketplace undetected.
What this means for you:
Earlier this year, Google implemented a security review process on its official “Play” store, reducing the number of fraudulent apps significantly. However, unlike the iPhone ecosystem, which locks users into only getting apps through its tightly controlled and reviewed iTunes appstore, Androids can bypass the Google’s official appstore to “sideload” apps on their smartphones via a single checkbox setting that is available in the operating system. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. With the possible exception of Amazon’s App Store, I would not recommend installing apps from any 3rd party app store. Amazon.com led the way in sideloading by announcing their own appstore in early 2011, primarily as a means to avoid paying distribution fees to Google to service their own Android-based Kindle devices. Given that keeping their user base safe is probably of utmost concern, it’s likely that Amazon will be carefully reviewing apps distributed through their ecosystem.
If you insist on sideloading apps from a 3rd party app store, make sure you know what you are doing, review the apps carefully, and when in doubt, do your research before installing that magical app that will do it all, and is also free. It may not cost you any money up front, but the longterm damage to your security and identity may be a cost you can’t afford.
Just a week after the debut of Windows 8, Microsoft held a press event in San Francisco, CA to announce the arrival of the latest version of its smartphone platform, dubbed Windows Phone 8. Timed to coincide with (and possibly to even eclipse) Google’s canceled East-coast press event, Microsoft instead had to fight for media attention with Hurricane Sandy. As a distant fourth place competitor, Microsoft has struggled to gain a toe hold in the smartphone race, facing daunting leads from Apple and Google, and even trailing the flagging RIM Blackberry platform.
What this means for you:
Unless you are a true-blue Microsoft fanatic, you more than likely already own a smartphone that gets the job done. There is a distinct possibility for Microsoft to overtake RIM’s Blackberry platform as the corporate phone of choice, but many enterprises have already opened their iron curtains for iPhones and Android devices. Gaining RIM’s share of the pie will only put them in 3rd place, and as such, integration into corporate environments will still take a backseat to solidifying usage of the dominant platforms. Most adopters of this platform will either be disatisfied technophiles looking for something fresh and different from iOS and Android, or corporate technologists investigating the platforms ability to integrate with existing Microsoft infrastructure. Microsoft’s primary hurdle in getting people to buy Windows phone remains in the lackluster app development landscape, which continues to be dominated by iPhone. Many of the most popular apps aren’t available yet for Windows Phone 8, and their arrival (if they come at all) will likely lag iOS and Android versions by months. If your primary smartphone usage is focused on making calls, checking email, and sharing pictures with your phone, Windows Phone 8 will get the job done, but if you like apps and don’t consider yourself an “early adopter”, give the platform at least another 6 months before weighing a change in platforms.