A recent study by Eric Smith, the assistant director of information security and networking at Bucknell, found that 68% of the most popular free Apps for the iPhone sent personal information without the user knowing. Each time that certain applications were launched they would send information such as the phone ID# along a network that eavesdroppers could easily use. Some applications even sent the users name and location exposing many users of the popular iPhone 4 and earlier models to information thieves. Sounds awfully similar to issues with laptops and desktops, right?
Mr. Smith closely examined 57 free applications from the App Store, used by iPhones, to see if they were sending information out without proper security. The results came after last week's discovery that many Google Android apps were sending out personal information when opened. What Eric Smith found was 38 of 57 apps were sending unique device IDs every time they were launched and 11 were sending encrypted codes which made it hard to tell what they were sending. Only 8 of 57 apps were not sending any information. Why would they do this?
The main reason that iPhone applications would be sending information Mr. Smith said in his report, is for advertising. Most free apps make their money through selling advertising space. The information that is collected could conceivably be used to create profiles on the different users of the application. The information in the profile could include browsing patterns, app usage, and location. That information could be sold by the ones collecting it or stolen by people eavesdropping on the network. The information would be able to tell the one viewing it where an iPhone user is at any given time. This is not an uncommon practice, but kind of scary don't you think?
The iPhones and the new iPhone 4 are not the only smart phones that are sending information. In fact studies have found that apps across all smart phone platforms, including the iPhone 4's biggest rival the Android series, are sending out sensitive information. With this breaking news and the imminent release of the white iPhone 4 it will be interesting to see how Apple will handle the report going forward. Apple currently instructs all of it App developers, "not to publicly associate a device's unique identifier with a user account," and that applications need to let the users, "know precisely what you're going to do with their data." However, apps from major brands seem to sidestep these guidelines. At the time of this writing, Amazon's app communicates the logged in users name and device ID without even encrypting it leaving many users vulnerable.
Anyone looking to get the iPhone 4 must now take this new threat in to consideration. Apple will need to step up and address the issues so that people are confident their private information will not be easily stolen or, even better, sent at all. As it stands every iPhone 4 and smart phone user must be wary of who can see their phone ID and location.
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