iPhone App Developer caught snooping on users
By Dave Jeyes
Without warning or any need based on it’s applications, iPhone gaming company Storm8 has been snooping on users’ cell phone numbers and storing them on their servers. Left unchecked, what other kind of malware might slip into the iTunes App Store?
Washington resident Michael Turner is suing iPhone game developer Storm8 for allegedly violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This is after reports surfaced in August that Storm8’s games were sending information back to the company about users that download its games.
Storm8’s titles include "Vampires Live," "Zombies Live" and "Rockstars Live," which are all available through the iTunes App Store. All of these games collected the telephone number from every person that downloaded them and sent the numbers back to the company.
While Storm8 called the problem a bug in it’s software, it seems unlikely that the company accidentally retrieved that information from its users. It’s possible that it was an ill-advised way of identifying different users, but one that should be stopped.
What’s troubling is the amount of information that could be in jeopardy of being accessed once an application is downloaded to your phone. The only information that you must expressly consent to sending to a company is your current location.
However there is also a lot of data on your phone that isn’t as dangerous as your location, but that you probably don’t want to share with iPhone App developers. It’s quite possible that these applications could access your address book, private text messages or even your email that’s stored on your iPhone.
Hopefully this data is also being protected by Apple. Otherwise unscrupulous developers could wreak havoc on unsuspecting iPhone owners that download applications to their phone.
It’s surprising that Apple doesn’t check what information gets shipped back to the developer as part of the App Store approval process. I guess Apple is focused on more important things like keeping satire and any apps that compete with theirs out of the App Store.
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November 6th, 2009
This is sloppy, sensationalist writing. You should check facts before making crazy assertions. The only way a developer can read your text messages or email messages is if you have chosen to jailbreak your phone, which presumably you did explicitly in order to circumvent the kind of protections you’re complaining about.
Now we’ll have to hear all kinds of outraged iPhone users get incensed because you’ve convinced them that their personal emails might be sent to servers by “unscrupulous developers.”
My guess is that your original speculation is spot on: Storm8 was just trying to identify users so that they could enable game play. Apple doesn’t give you any way to identify a user across devices, and this might have been a way to accomplish that, so that you don’t have to set up your account separately on multiple devices.
November 6th, 2009
It’s a good thing nobody would go and do such a thing as jailbreak their phone. Oh wait…
November 6th, 2009
You’re missing the point. That the iPhone OS can allow such a thing is troubling.