Study finds 14% of free iPhone apps can snoop contacts
Written by Gary McArthur Saturday, 31 July 2010 06:43
This week at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, security research firm Lookout revealed that it analysed more than 300,000 free applications available on both the iPhone App Store and Android Market. Reporting on the conference AppleInsider tells us that 14 percent of free App Store software has the ability to access a user's contacts on their iPhone.Additionally, 33 percent of free applications on the App Store have the ability to access a user's location — 28 percent of software on the App Store is free.
Apple is not alone in this worrying trend, Edible Apple explains. The Android Marketplace has been subjected to snooping as well. Between 1.1 million and 4.6 million users have downloaded a wallpaper app which has the ability to send back the phone’s SIM card number, subscriber info, and in some cases, a user's voicemail password to mysterious servers located in China.
