Your Own Mini-Stalker

kashif.ahsan writes "A ComputerWorld article discusses the inherent privacy dangers of carrying around our ubiquitous technological assistants. They're like miniature stalkers, right there in your pocket. 'Camera phones contain all the necessary ingredients for completely invasive stalking: a microphone, camera, personal data on the user, location information, a chat and call history — you name it. And victims carry them everywhere they go. All that's missing is the software that lets stalkers take control ... new software, called snoopware, does just that.'"

Open it up....

[jjh37997]

The stalkers of the world will always have the upper hand as long as we try and keep the genie in the bottle. We need to make the technology a two-way street and get rid of the myth of privacy. I don't have a problem giving away my personal infomation as long as I know who has access to it and I'm able to get the same back in kind. A battered woman is more empowered by knowing where her abusive ex-husband is at all times or knowing when he accesses information about her than she is by going undercover and into hiding.

That's a feature

[oheso]

In Japan it's marketed as a feature. You can stalk your kids as they walk from school to home (with various detours into convenience stores to read the manga, etc.). There's an ad with some kid walking home and everywhere he goes there are black hats videoing him and speaking into lapel microphones.

Hillbilly

[sporkme]

A battered woman is best off when related to a real man, a member of a dying breed. We remember how to disappear a guy. Counseling not required. Without a father, father-in-law, brother, cousin, close friend, or godfather in possession of Actual Real Testicles (TM). Sadly, a battered woman is best served with tartar sauce, justice system on the side. A stupid ass phone is a hill of beans unless 911 is dialed on it, and that usually happens when it is too late.

I know what you're getting at with the two-way street bit, but with that location tracking info you'll just be like Sigourney Weaver with the little alien-detecting-PDA. Blip, Blip, Blip, there he is. Difference is that Sigourney had an assault rifle and a handful of jarheads to tend to her woes. Who is gonna be there when Bobby the beater is in the ceiling?

The linked article is seems to be highly overrated

[xk0der]

I still can't figure out how the hell the so called "hacker" was able to install the so called "snoopware" into their new phones?? ... were these people soooo stupid to have their Bluetooth turned on, or installing any xyz application sent by a person they don't even know??

May be the MMS or SMS they received with the "snoopware" had the title "P0rn" ...

Apart from this .. the article seems too far fetched from reality! (IMO)

Re:THAT certainly scared me!

[LyingForTheGreaterGo]

When I was doing business in Russia in the early 90s, Russian businessmen regularly would take the batteries out of their cellphones when not using them in order to prevent GPS tracking and/or remote recording of conversations via the cellphone's mic.

Paranoid or rightfully wary?

(Or maybe just Russian?)