Warning: Google Found Another Way To Invade Your Privacy
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A couple of days ago TheNew York Times reported that Apple’s iOS was mistakenly giving access toyourphotos if you grant an application access to location services. Today, Google hasretaliated, saying, “We see your heinous bug and raise!” Buttoday NYT is reporting that Android is less secure in this regard, and stores photos in a central location that’saccessible to any app that wants them. So it takes no user interaction or approval for adeveloper to grab your images off of your mobile or tablet, regardless of the Androidversion. Google responded to the revelation bysaying that, since Android was designed like a desktop system like Windows or Mac OS X,it built the file system this way -- in effect, saying, “It’s not abug.” No, it just looks, smells and acts like one. Google said it willconsider changing the way pictures are handled in Android, but nothing is officiallyplanned. Android’s seen an over 3,000% rise in malware this year, and the recentshady browser-tracking maneuvers by Google make us think that the FTC’s torchlightwill be motivation enough to fix this colossal privacy-risk feature of the operatingsystem. The explanation “This was designedlike a desktop OS” is Google’s less-than-forthcoming way of saying “Wescrewed up.” Besides, desktop OSes aren’t going to be allowing this type ofaccess without user intervention for much longer. Applications that are downloaded fromthe App Store in Apple’s forthcoming 10.8 (MountainLion) OS cannot initiate something like uploading an image without a user explicitlydoing so. It’s called “sandboxing,” and it’s a standard securityfeature that is implemented in any OS that exposes user info to the internet. You have to give the application permission to step out of its sandbox. Google’s face-savingattempt is misleading, but ironically makes it look worse. It’s like saying,“We didn’t know how modern operating systems work.” Google, meet Mr.Internet. Now hand Mr. Internet your camera and step into the fountain so it can takeyour photograph. Continue Reading
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Originally Posted by Skeletor
