Privacy

ScreenGuardz Privacy for iPhone -- TiPb @ CES 2010

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Jan 15, 2010 a 9:38 am

NLU Products, makers of BodyGuardz, were gracious enough to take some time out at CES 2010 and show TiPb their four-way ScreenGuardz Privacy film for iPhone. Four-way means it won't just shield your iPhone from prying eyes in portrait mode, but horizontal as well. Buh-bye over-the-shoulder airplane movie snooper!

Check out the video, after the break!

Nuance Responds to Dragon Dictation for iPhone Privacy Concerns

By Rene Ritchie, Wednesday, Dec 9, 2009 a 9:34 am

Nuance's Dragon Dictation for iPhone raised some privacy concerns upon launch due to the server-side nature of its transcription and the apparent transmission of users' contact list to Nuance's servers. Addressing at least some of these concerns, Nuance has posted the following statement:

Apple Rejects/Removes Unity-built Games to Protect User Privacy

By Rene Ritchie, Saturday, Nov 14, 2009 a 7:47 pm

It looks like Apple is using its rejection power for good this time -- removing games built on the Unity engine which included private-API calls that could be used to steal private user information like your iPhone's phone number.

Not all of the rejected/removed games were engaged in privacy violations (or even had the network capability to exploit it), but Apple isn't taking any chances following the Storm8 lawsuit. Touch Arcade has the details:

Lawsuit Claims Game Company Violating Privacy, Collecting iPhone Users' Phone Numbers

By Rene Ritchie, Sunday, Nov 8, 2009 a 3:00 pm

The Register is reporting that a lawsuit has been filed against an iPhone game developer for privacy violations:

The complaint claims best-selling games made by Storm8 contained secret code that bypassed safeguards built into the iPhone to prevent the unauthorized snooping of user information. [...] to access, collect, and transmit the wireless phone numbers of the iPhones on which its games are installed," states the complaint, which was filed in US District Court in Northern California. "Storm8 does so or has done so in all of its games." [...] [including] World War, iMobsters, Racing Live, Vampires Live, Kingdoms Live, Zombies Live, and Rockstars Live.

Dev-Team: Palm Pre May Track User Location, but 3rd Party iPhone Apps Do Too!

By Rene Ritchie, Monday, Aug 17, 2009 a 7:13 am

The iPhone Dev-Team take a break from the Jailbreak to throw some light on the issue of 3rd party iPhone apps tracking users' location. Joey Hess and our friends over at PreCentral.net kicked up a bit of a ruckus last week detailing how the Palm Pre reports users' location data back to Palm HQ. Well, says the Dev-Team:

Browser Wars: Opera Mobile Brings Back "Turbo" Boost to Compete with Safari

By Rene Ritchie, Wednesday, Jul 22, 2009 a 6:12 am

No word yet on whether you get a pocket Hasselhoff to push it for you, but it sounds like Opera Mobile 9.7 is set to bring back the "Turbo" boost in an effort to take it to Mobile Safari (and, we presume, WebKit in general as found on the iPhone, Google Chrome lite for Android, Palm Pre, some Nokia devices, etc. etc.... etc...)

Ganging up on the "real internet" browser are our good friends Matt Miller from NokiaExperts.com and Phil Nickinson from WMExperts.com. Matt explains the concept behind Nokia's blast from the past via his ZDNet blog:

Turbo mode that supplements the native Opera Mobile browser with the proxy functionality found in Opera Mini. So, with Opera Mobile 9.7 and Turbo mode enabled you get a fully functioning web browser with proxy/server side lifting going on to provide the FASTEST browsing experience currently available on a mobile phone.

TiPb vaguely remembers proxy and cache tricks from those old spamvertisements promising to quadruple our old dial-up modem speeds. Phil tries to pip us to the proxy post, however:

Eye-Candy or All-Seeing Eye? iPhone Effects a Security Risk?

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Sep 12, 2008 a 9:30 am

Apple has past mastered using animation to aid both usability and fill transitions. An example of the latter is the "shrink" effect used when you hit the home button: whatever's currently on diminishes to nothingness and the home screen icons fly back into place. To do this effect, however, the iPhone takes a quick screen shot, and then uses the built in CoreGraphics/Animation layers to rapidly scale it down.

Steve Jobs is Going to be Okay says Steve Jobs

By Casey Chan, Saturday, Jul 26, 2008 a 3:48 pm

A reporter over at one of those reputable, printing companies recently received a phone call from Steve Jobs and this was his opening line:

"This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”

You gotta hand it to him, even if he is feeling a little down, Steve will still serve you a new one if he wants to. But there has been a lot of speculation lately on what's affecting Steve Jobs' health and it's making investors worried.

iPhone 2.0: Secure Erase

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Jun 26, 2008 a 10:55 am

Remember when AT&T was selling refurbished iPhone 2G's at (what was then) ridiculously low prices? Remember how it turned out some of those units still contained the personal information of their previous owners? Apple seems to remember, and has reportedly taken steps to prevent it from happening again.

Review: Case-Mate Universal Privacy Screen Pro for iPhone

By Casey Chan, Wednesday, Apr 23, 2008 a 3:25 pm

Ever wish you could keep prying eyes away from your iPhone? Always paranoid that strangers can read all your sensitive e-mails, bank account information, and stock portfolios? Well here’s the solution: the Case-mate Universal Privacy Screen Pro for iPhone ($19.95). It prevents those snoopy people from peering over your shoulder and keeps your information private by offering a viewing angle of 45 degrees.

Read on for the rest of the review!