Class Action Fishing: Apple Sued Over Third Party User Tracking

from the seems-like-a-stretch dept

One of those class action specialist lawsuit firms, who seem to file lawsuits mostly designed to make the lawyers money, rather than correct any sort of improper actions, has sued Apple and some app makers over supposed privacy violations. At issue is the fact that some apps pass on the unique UDID code that is associated with each iPhone to advertisers. This lets advertisers track the same user across multiple apps -- similar, in some sense, to a browser cookie. The "difference" is that a browser cookie is deletable, while you're stuck with your UDID. This all came out a couple weeks ago in a WSJ article, and since these kinds of lawyers are opportunists, they're always quick to jump on any lawsuit opportunity whenever the press highlights a story like this.

Not surprisingly, it appears this case is yet another attempt to abuse the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), which is generally thought of as an anti-hacking law, but which is continulously stretched and abused to pull in other situations. In this case, the lawyers are claiming that accessing the UDID without permission is the equivalent of accessing a computer without authorization. Think about that for a second and then realize how silly this is. No one is hacking anything to get this info. The info is made available, and so it's been shared. Using the CFAA here is ridiculous. They also seek to use a similar California anti-hacking law in a similar way. This is clearly not what those laws are intended for.

Furthermore, it seems silly to blame Apple for the way that some app providers are sharing data. To get around this issue, the lawyers rely on two key points. First, that Apple itself recently changed its terms to ban apps from sending data to third parties such as ad networks. Of course, most people realized this was not about protecting privacy, but about forcing developers to use Apple's own ad platform. Second, the fact that Apple approves each of the apps in the marketplace. I know that some people assume this automatically adds liability to Apple for anything those apps do, but that seems like a bit of a stretch as well. It's ridiculous to assume that Apple tests all aspects of an app, and thus becomes liable for anything those apps do.

All in all this looks like yet another attempt by some lawyers to take some fear mongering and make some money out of it. It's not going to do anything to protect anyone's actual privacy.

Filed Under: ads, apps, class action, iphones, privacy
Companies: apple

Location Targeted Coupons: Patented

from the oh-come-on dept

I remember over a decade ago, talking with lots of folks in Silicon Valley about the idea of doing mobile coupons -- with the typical example being "imagine as you walked by a Starbucks, if it could pop up a coupon on your phone." Hell, all the way back in 2004, we were talking about this idea as being talked about for "ages." The problem was not with the basic idea. People were just waiting for the infrastructure to catch up: for GPS to become common in phones, for smartphones to hit the market, for mobile broadband to be available, etc. So it seems pretty ridiculous that, in 2005, some folks from Where Inc., applied for a patent on the concept, which has now been granted, and seems ridiculously broad (Patent number 7,848,765). The challenge was never about how to do this. That was obvious to all sorts of people. The issue was just waiting for the infrastructure to catch up. It's ridiculous that such an idea that was widely discussed way before this patent was applied for is now locked up via a patent.

Filed Under: coupons, location based services, patents
Companies: where

Does The FCC Really Not Understand The Difference Between A Device Operating System And A Mobile Network?

from the these-are-the-people-who-regulate-us? dept

As we still wait for the details of the FCC's net neutrality ruling, some have noticed that the FCC's justification for not caring much about wireless networks is somewhat baffling. Specifically, the FCC used the openness of the Android operating system as evidence that things are open in the mobile networking world:

Further, we recognize that there have been meaningful recent moves toward openness, including the introduction of open operating systems like Android.

Now, whether or not you agree with the FCC's plans, or with the idea of "net neutrality" regulations in general, this statement is a bit of a head scratcher. It's kind of like saying "because cars use gasoline, we see no reason to set speed limits." I mean, the two are kinda sorta related in that they both involve cars (or mobile computing), but they're not the same thing at all. Just because Android is a more open operating system has nothing to do with network discrimination or questions about the end-to-end principle of networks. Making such a statement suggests that the FCC doesn't understand the difference between an operating system and a mobile network... and that's just scary.

Filed Under: android, fcc, net neutrality, openness, operating system
Companies: fcc

Not All Retailers Overreacting To Mobile Phone Wielding Shoppers

from the nice-to-see dept

The WSJ recently had an article about how shoppers in retail stores are increasingly wielding smartphones which they use to comparison shop on the fly -- sometimes even buying products online for less while standing in the store looking at the products themselves. While some store owners are definitely freaked out about this, the article did point out that some are recognizing this is actually an opportunity to either poach customers from other stores and/or to entice them with more offers directly:

Through a partnership with TheFind, Best Buy now targets personalized advertisements to shoppers when the program detects that they are in stores such as Wal-Mart.

If shoppers use TheFind's free app to compare prices on TVs at Wal-Mart, for example, the phone gleans the particulars from their recent search and shows them ads of similar electronics for sale at Best Buy. The items aren't always identical, and the prices aren't always better, but it is an attempt by Best Buy to enter the competition, similar to the way that marketers now target special offers to consumers based on what they are searching for on home computers.

...

The hard sell doesn't stop there. If a customer inside a Best Buy compares prices through TheFind and discovers a better deal elsewhere, the retailer also makes one last pitch for the sale with ads showing them deals on other products at the store, such as a similar Blu-ray player that comes with a free movie disc.

Elsewhere in the article, it's noted that shoppers with mobile phones often are much more happy to ask questions via their phone and a browser or app, rather than having to talk to someone in the store, which also suggests that stores might not need to staff as many people to help customers.

Of course, some of what's in the article sounds like it may be wishful thinking. I'm not sure that all of those localized offers will really work all that well, but at the very least it's a starting point, and it's nice to see Best Buy at least trying to embrace the new technology rather than just fight it.

Filed Under: mobile phones, shopping
Companies: best buy

How Long Until A Feature Length Movie Is Filmed Entirely With Smartphones?

from the we're-getting-there dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the (very, very cool) publicity stunt pulled by the band Atomic Tom, where they performed one of their songs live on the NYC Subway using only iPhones as instruments. Of course, they also filmed the whole thing with iPhones as well and that's actually becoming more popular. Jeremy points us to a story at Mashable covering ten music videos filmed with the iPhone and most of them are pretty damn good. Here's one that was produced and edited by Emmy Award-winner Alen Petkovic for the band Vintage Trouble: As you watch these videos, you realize that in a lot of cases, if you didn't know they were filmed with a smartphone, you'd probably never know. We've shown how filmmakers can make a pretty high quality film with a standard DSLR in the past but I'm beginning to wonder when we'll see the first released "feature film" filmed entirely with smartphones. I would imagine it can't be that far away.

And, if you think about it, this is pretty damn exciting. I remember when I was a kid, the idea of being able to make movies was a really cool idea but it involved saving up a ton of money to buy an expensive video camera or hoping that you could find some friends whose parents had a video camera (which they never really wanted us kids to borrow). But when you get a super high quality video camera included in the phone you already bought anyway... well, suddenly some pretty powerful things can be enabled.

At a time when the movie industry is whining and complaining about how there are supposedly going to be fewer movies made, I'd argue that they haven't paid much attention to how much the tools of film making have been getting ridiculously cheaper over the past couple of decades. And no (before the Hollywood apologists step in and falsely claim this), I'm not saying that just because you can take decent videos on an iPhone, it means that we don't need professionals or higher end cameras and such. This is just to point out the extreme end of the spectrum and to recognize that some of it is definitely filtering back to other parts of film making as well. A professional film shot on a tight budget might actually be able to do a few more things because they can go with cheaper cameras. I've been listening to Kevin Smith's podcasts about his upcoming film Red State, and at one point, they mentioned that in order to fit things in their budget, they ended up borrowing a Red Camera (which is a high quality, but relatively cheap camera) from a guy in exchange for letting him hang out on set. But imagine what more people could do if they could devote less of their budget to things like cameras and make existing budgets go further.

Filed Under: filming, movies, smartphones

Deep Packet Inspection Firms Trying To Turn Net Neutrality Satire Into Reality

from the yeah,-good-luck-with-that dept

It's been around for a few years, but those of you who follow the net neutrality debate may have seen the following "example" here or there of what various ISPs would like to do to the internet if they could: Basically, the idea is that, if they could, ISPs would like to charge you for what you used specifically online. Of course, this was a joke. It was satire. But, then, a bunch of folks have been talking about a recent presentation given by some deep packet inspection firms, about the future of mobile broadband, where they seem to pitch something quite similar -- except they're serious: The idea, as discussed over at Broadband Reports, is that this is a way for ISPs to get more money out of people using their broadband. It's all hilariously illustrated by the following graphic in the presentation: This, of course, implies that ISPs are somehow unfairly carrying the burden of the services people access online. It may sound nice, but the problem is that it's almost entirely false. Individuals pay for their own bandwidth, and companies pay for their bandwidth. What the ISPs are hoping to do is to effectively double and triple charge both sides in an effort to squeeze even more money out of the system than they already do. What's ignored is that broadband services are already quite profitable, and they're already getting paid for this stuff. What's really happening is that -- just as content providers "overvalue" their content, this story is about ISPs overvaluing their own contribution, and wanting a larger piece of the pie concerning money made online. What they ignore is that the reason there are so many useful services online, that make it worthwhile to buy internet access in the first place, is because of the lack of such tollbooths.

However, before people get too alarmed about all of this, and start demanding "net neutrality" laws, it's worth taking a step back and recognizing just how unlikely it is that proposals like this ever get anywhere. Would the various mobile operators like to do this? Sure. In fact, for years, they tried to resist more open systems by totally locking down their handsets. Even with so-called "smartphones," the experience was entirely controlled (with tollbooths) by the mobile operators. And what happened? Almost no one used them. It wasn't until Apple broke down that wall (though, it set up its own, slightly more open wall) that smartphone usage really took off. And, these days, with even more open Android systems growing, more people are moving to those as well.

Will some mobile operators sign up for a DPI system like this? Maybe. I can certainly see some of them testing it out. But, I can't see it ever actually catching on. While the operators will claim that this will allow for "cheaper" plans for low level users, history has shown that they don't really mean that. The goal is to get the higher level users paying through the nose. And that won't work -- because people have already learned what can be done with mobile broadband on a device, and simply won't agree to go to a system that charges like this. It's a pipedream for some DPI companies and some mobile operators, but the likelihood of it actually becoming the norm seems pretty damn low.

Filed Under: deep packet inspection, mobile broadband, net neutrality, wireless

Does WiFi Make Trees Sick?

from the why-wifi? dept

We've heard claims for years that WiFi makes some people sick. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that in double-blind studies people can't tell if there's WiFi (even if they do appear to really feel sick when they think WiFi is present). However, a new report is claiming that WiFi is making trees sick, and that the impact is pretty widespread. Having just had to take down a (rather large) tree in our yard that suddenly died, this made me pay attention -- but it seems quite unlikely it had anything to do with WiFi. In this study, it seems like the findings are extremely preliminary and involve a very small scale test, which appeared to show that WiFi radios had more of an impact than other sources of electromagnetic radiation. It could be quite interesting to see further testing in this area, but it seems a bit early to conclude anything specific about WiFi.

Filed Under: sickness, trees, wifi

You Can Use Up Your Entire Monthly Verizon Wireless LTE Data Allotment In Just 32 Minutes

from the broadband-caps dept

We always find it amusing when people point to various wireless data networks as real "competition" to wired broadband offerings, in part because the various 3G offerings out there all have ridiculously low data caps -- usually 5 gigs per month -- that a large percentage of users are likely to bump up against if they used the connection as their primary connection. The one exception -- for now -- is Sprint's WiMax offering which has no cap, but may eventually. The issue, of course, is capacity. These networks simply weren't built to handle the type of capacity that people would use it for if they could. But as the data speeds get faster, it leads to ridiculous situations like the realization that with Verizon Wireless' new LTE offering, you can use up the monthly allotment of 5 gigs in just 32 minutes (of course, that's assuming you've got 5 gigs to download, and you're getting pretty damn good speeds on that network). I'm somewhat surprised that Verizon Wireless isn't following Sprint in dumping the cap for the next generation network. Maybe, instead of just focusing on more speed for press releases, they should focus on building capacity so that people could actually use these next generation networks.

Filed Under: broadband caps, lte, wireless
Companies: verizon wireless

Jailbreaking Phones Lands A Guy In... Jail!

from the dmca-exemptions-be-damned dept

You may remember, back in 2006, one of the DMCA "exemptions" granted by the Librarian of Congress was for jailbreaking or unlocking mobile phones, for the purpose of moving them to a different carrier. This move was most seriously fought by one company: Tracfone, which offers prepaid phones at a steep discount. Its business model only works if you can't jailbreak phones -- but copyright law was never about protecting one company's bad business model. Tracfone has even claimed that allowing such jailbreaking is a matter of national security. What they really mean is that it's a matter of protecting their business model.

Tracfone actually sued the Librarian of Congress for allowing jailbreaking but, in 2007, quietly dropped the lawsuit because it found that courts were simply ignoring the exemption. Instead, Tracfone just kept suing people for jailbreaking and many caved and settled. What was really troubling though, was that people were being put in jail for this. Now, in the first trial involving such a case, a guy (who has already spent over a year in jail for unlocking phones) has been found guilty of violating the DMCA.

This is according to a press release put out by the lawyers representing Tracfone and they sort of bury the key point: the guy pled guilty. So it's not as if a court judged the overall situation on the merits. But what's scary is that this seems to clearly go against the very exemption the Librarian of Congress made for jailbreaking phones. And we're not even talking about a civil copyright complaint here, but a criminal one... for doing something that the Librarian of Congress has already said is legal.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, jailbreaking, phones, unlocking
Companies: tracfone

Transportation Secretary Expects To Use Technology To Block All Mobile Phone Usage In Cars [Updated]

from the unintended-consequences... dept

We've noted in the past that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has long been an advocate of wider bans on various technologies in cars. Just last month he said he hoped to have a complete ban on talking to any kind of device in your car, including mobile phones, telematics systems like OnStar, and GPS systems. His latest argument (as sent in by quite a few of you) is to suggest that perhaps the US government will mandate technology that blocks a mobile phone from working while the car is moving. We've talked about this technology before (though I'm having trouble finding earlier posts on it). It would simply recognize if the phone is moving at a certain rate of speed and then block the phone from being used. LaHood seems to like the idea:

"There's a lot of technology out there now that can disable phones and we're looking at that," said LaHood on MSNBC.... "I think it will be done," said LaHood. "I think the technology is there and I think you're going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones. We need to do a lot more if were going to save lives."

Of course, it's unclear why passengers shouldn't be able to use mobile phones while in a car (or bus or train) as well. There are also different ways that this can work, whether with scramblers or with software installed on the phone but, in either case, you could see it banning phone calls in perfectly safe situations (on a train or a bus?). Once again, this seems like overkill. Furthermore, it will almost certainly have unintended consequences. We've already pointed to some recent research that showed that driving-while-texting bans increased accidents, as drivers kept on texting, but hid their phones lower, taking their eyes even further off the road.

No one denies that distracted driving is quite dangerous. But we shouldn't be rushing into simply banning stuff or mandating blocks without thinking through the actual implications of that.

Update: LaHood is now claiming that his remarks were misrepresented. However, it's not clear that's the case. He restates the first part of what he said on MSNBC and doesn't say anything about the second part -- when he was pushed on whether or not the tech would become mandated, and he said "I think it will be done." In his response, he seems to ignore that part of what he said...

Filed Under: distracted driving, driving, ray lahood, technology