Posts Tagged mobile phones

The Case For Banning Surveillance Ads

From The Electronic Freedom Foundation:

The behavioral advertising industry claims that it can deliver more value to everyone through this surveillance: advertisers get to target exactly who they want to reach; publishers get paid top dollar for setting up exactly the right user with exactly the right ad, and the user wins because they are only ever shown highly relevant ads that are tailored to their interests.

And as to the claim that users “like ads, so long as they are relevant,” the evidence is very strong that this isn’t true and never was. Ad-blocking is the most successful consumer boycott in human history. When Apple gave iPhone users a one-click opt-out to block all surveillance ads, 96 percent of users clicked the button (presumably, the other four percent were confused, or they work for ad-tech companies).

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Primer for Protesters and “Anti-Government Extremists”

From EFF:

Cell Phone Guide For US Protesters, Updated 2014 Edition

With major protests in the news again, we decided it’s time to update our cell phone guide for protestors. A lot has changed since we last published this report in 2011, for better and for worse. On the one hand, we’ve learned more about the massive volume of law enforcement requests for cell phone—ranging from location information to actual content—and widespread use of dedicated cell phone surveillance technologies. On the other hand, strong Supreme Court opinions have eliminated any ambiguity about the unconstitutionality of warrantless searches of phones incident to arrest, and a growing national consensus says location data, too, is private.

Protesters want to be able to communicate, to document the protests, and to share photos and video with the world. So they’ll be carrying phones, and they’ll face a complex set of considerations about the privacy of the data those phones hold. We hope this guide can help answer some questions about how to best protect that data, and what rights protesters have in the face of police demands. Read the rest of this entry »

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How Governments Spy On You

From Wired:

Newly uncovered components of a digital surveillance tool used by more than 60 governments worldwide provide a rare glimpse at the extensive ways law enforcement and intelligence agencies use the tool to surreptitiously record and steal data from mobile phones.

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Blackphone Challenging Conventional Wisdom

From the Silent Circle blog:

Blackphone is an innovative new ecosystem. The idea of creating an entirely new ecosystem is not new. Microsoft had its run with Windows, Skype, and Bing. They created an entire ecosystem behind the hardware and software, but failed to innovate ahead of the curve. Blackberry had its run with the phones, BEZ servers and BBM messaging. They are now dying a thousand little deaths because they did not innovate quickly enough. Google, Apple, Samsung and others have created dominant ecosystems that tie in software, hardware, wearables, media, music and services.  They rapidly innovated new platforms and models that left Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, HTC and others behind quickly. It’s been an amazing run for them, but this model too is dwindling. Fast movers like Xiaomi are killing them. Innovation, security and privacy demands are already putting cracks in this windshield. The fuel that feeds their ecosystem machine is customer data… Your data. It is pure gold to them.

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Spy Apps For the Individual

Silent Circle – Secure Communications

Photo Trap – Tamper Detection

Life360 – Safety and Tracking

1Password – Secure Password Management

iDiscreet – Data Encryption

Norton Mobile Security – Firewall for Phones

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Mobile users more vulnerable to phishing scams

2011 story from: Fierce CIO

Security vendor: Mobile users more vulnerable to phishing scams
January 10, 2011 — 12:18am ET | By Caron Carlson

It’s not as though we need more reminders of the security risks mobile devices pose to the enterprise, but according to security vendor Trusteer, mobile users are three times more likely to be the victim of phishing scams than desktop users.

According to Trusteer’s research, based on a review of log files of a number of web servers hosting phishing sites, when mobile users access phishing sites, they are three times more likely to hand over their login data. Why are mobile users so gullible? One possibility is that it is more difficult to detect a phishing site on a mobile device, the company suggests.

Part of the vulnerability for mobile users is simply that they are always connected and inclined to read their email as it arrives, writes Trusteer CEO Mickey Boodaei, in a post on his company’s blog. “The first couple of hours in a phishing attack are critical. After that many attacks are blocked by phishing filters or taken down,” he writes. “Hence mobile users are more likely to be hit by Phishing just because they’re ‘always on.'”

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ZeuS Can Defeat Mobile Phone 2-factor Authentication

From: S21sec and Dave Jevans

It appears now that the criminals have developed malicious software for various mobile smart phones, than can capture these (one-time password)  banking text messages, and forward them to the criminals so that they can  log into the user’s bank account.

In his blog posting, David describes analyzing such a mobile phone malware that was designed for Symbian phones.

He calls this attack, “Man-in-the-mobile”.

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