Wednesday, March 3, 2010

What Your iPhone Apps Know About You

Andy Greenberg (via Nicolas Seriot):

There’s no doubt, Shields says, that phones are still much safer from spying software than PCs, which allow software to be installed from any source, often invisibly, as in the case of “drive-by downloads” by infected Web pages or booby-trapped e-mail attachments. But the wide privileges given to phone apps still create exploitable vulnerabilities in devices, says Shields.

I’m more worried about software from the App Store. I don’t believe Apple’s screening process can offer significant protection, and the phone is so locked down that users can’t easily audit what the apps are doing.

1 Comment »

I think this is just a problem living with pervasive networking. On the Mac we have tools like Little Snitch to let us know what apps are phoning home, but even that isn't perfect.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a Comment