Microsoft's SwiftKey Suspends Sync After Keyboard Leaks Strangers' Contact Details (zdnet.com) 41
Swiftkey has suspended its cloud-sync service and switched off email address predictions amid reports of Microsoft-owned keyboard app delivering suggestions for strangers' email addresses and phone numbers. ZDNet reports: The move followed reports a week ago that the app was offering up email addresses to people they've never met. According to The Telegraph, one user claimed to have been contacted by a stranger and told that their brand-new phone had suggested two of the user's email addresses, as well as contact phone numbers. Reports of the bug also cite some users receiving predictions in languages they'd never used previously. "I logged into SwiftKey with Google+ and now, I'm getting someone else's German predictions with only English (UK) pack installed. I have never typed German in my entire life," one Reddit user reported last week. SwiftKey on Friday suggested the leaked contact details are due to a glitch in this sync service, which normally backs up what the app learns about a user to SwiftKey servers and then syncs that data to the user's other devices.Microsoft acquired SwiftKey app earlier this year for an estimated sum of $250 million.
Cloud security for you! (Score:5, Interesting)
It has to be said again and again...(sigh)
Wait a minute. I'm a manager, and I've been reading a lot of case studies and watching a lot of webcasts about The Cloud. Based on all of this glorious marketing literature, I, as a manager, have absolutely no reason to doubt the safety of any data put in The Cloud.
The case studies all use words like "secure", "MD5", "RSS feeds" and "encryption" to describe the security of The Cloud. I don't know about you, but that sounds damn secure to me! Some Clouds even use SSL and HTTP. That's rock solid in my book.
And don't forget that you have to use Web Services to access The Cloud. Nothing is more secure than SOA and Web Services, with the exception of perhaps SaaS. But I think that Cloud Services 2.0 will combine the tiers into an MVC-compliant stack that uses SaaS to increase the security and partitioning of the data.
My main concern isn't with the security of The Cloud, but rather with getting my team to learn all about it so we can deploy some first-generation The Cloud applications and Web Services to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our business intelligence and reporting, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to The Cloud 2.0.
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Your write-up lacks synergy.
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Your write-up lacks synergy.
Uh oh. Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays.
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The issue that the "Secure" has a lot of meaning. Secure could mean you are guaranteed that you data will get from point x to y without errors or getting dropped.
The issue isn't "Cloud Security" it is people falling for buzzards and not shopping for the best cloud option. If the company wants your business then they will need to explain how secure they are in ways that people will understand.
Or you can be a stupid customer and get what everyone else seems to have.
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Any third party service is an extra exposure, period.
You have to be an absolute unmitigated idiot to even think about using something that sends every fucking keystroke to a third party.
And even if you pick the best cloud service every time, you are going to lose if you go out and make yourself dependent on 100 of these things. Not to mention the fact that they often lie and often change their security postures over time. They also love to farm out critical parts of what they do to still more cloud services
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Microsoft follows the best in class scheme, where their products are targeted to be best amongst all competitors. If the competitors are shit, then the product may be shit as well, but if the competitors are really good, microsoft invests lots of money until the ms product is better than those.
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Microsoft follows the best in class scheme, where their products are targeted to be best amongst all competitors. If the competitors are shit, then the product may be shit as well, but if the competitors are really good, microsoft invests lots of money until the ms product is better than those.
Really? So every MS product that has good competition is better than said competition?
How much does MS pay you for that B.S.?
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So every MS product that has good competition is better than said competition?
Well yeah, if they outsell the competition, that means they're better. That's how the market works, right?
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>but if the competitors are really good, microsoft invests lots of money until the ms product is better than those.
Like with Windows Phone?!
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By "targeting to be the best", that is generally in marketing materials. As in, they go "the next version will have all the bugs fixed that are in the current version, and it will have all the features of the main competitors and a bunch of new features that are super awesome". So you better not buy the competitors product, just wait until our super-awesome thing comes out and buy it instead.
Thanks for the summary of what's in my other windo (Score:2)
Right now I'm listening to four hours of Amazon AWS "training" (sales pitch) in other window. Their training is almost word-for-word what you posted.
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Don't look now, but the guy who posted that is sitting at the same table you are.
He better get out of my house (Score:2)
If that's the case, he better gtfo of my house. :)
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The best part is your post was marked +5 interesting instead of +5 funny.
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Even assuming your comment was sarcasm, I still think it's worth investigating how this 'bug' appeared only months after the acquisition.
Yeah because Microsoft decides periodically to cause mischief just because it can, in a product that it's desperately trying to groom, at a time when this issue is a very sensitive topic, in the wake of a large controversy over its star breadwinner, in regions where it could potentially face serious and sustained liability.
Let's not kid ourselves here, this is almost certainly a "Joe updated the server side dictionary manager but Jaine is behind schedule on the client" situation.
Boy am I glad I have a backup! (Score:2)
I guess I missed that memo
Where do I put the sarcasm tag again?
Never typed German? (Score:5, Funny)
with only English (UK) pack installed. I have never typed German in my entire life
Have you ever thanked an old veteran for that?
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We also defeated the British in the Revolutionary War, and we nae spake English since!
Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft paid a quarter of a billion dollars for that?
W.C. Fields was right.
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Microsoft paid a quarter of a billion dollars for that? W.C. Fields was right.
Don't blame Swiftkey.
Blame Microsoft for ruining a service, that was working perfectly well before the acquisition.
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They get to vacuum up every single word, password, phone number, email address, etc. typed in by millions of users, store it all in the cloud, correlate it and crunch it for who-knows-what purposes. $250M is cheap. It was probably paid for with American tax money, anyway; the plebs would have been too suspicious if NSA had bought SwiftKey outright.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lemme get this straight... People want their keyboard app synced with the cloud?
Yep... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not sure if it matters but I never signed up for an account. And I don't have any options to enable /disable the cloud sync and/or enable/disable a personalized dictionary.
I was wondering if you opened an account? I double checked by opening settings/account and got nothing but an invite. One of the linked articles implied that having an account was needed for this bug to be enabled.
If it isn't, I'll probably keep SwiftKey. However if they're leaking data from everyone or just at random , I'll be joining yo
Microsoft Danger, anyone? (Score:1)
Remember what happened when Microsoft acquired service called "Danger"? It could be worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]