FBI can Remotely Activate your Android Phone and Laptop's Mic, Cameras: Report

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It wasn’t long ago when whole world was shocked at the revelation that NSA (National Security Agency) and FBI of United States of America has direct access to the servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Skype, Yahoo, Apple and other internet companies, from where they can extract any user information at their will, without any authorization or approval required from justice and legal departments.

Situation has only worsen with this new finding that FBI can remotely activate the microphones and cameras of your smartphones running Google’s Android platform and laptops without users’ consent, reported WSJ.

Report said that FBI has been developing such hacking and surveillance tools for last ten years. Additionally, there are private firms which sell them such tools to spy the users. Without a doubt – as unveiled earlier – FBI has support from technology companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and others.

Moreover, FBI uses spyware tools to record keystrokes or almost any activity on a computer or smartphone.

Report says that there are usually warrants required to undergo such surveillance on suspects, however, it argues that there were instances when FBI had recorded users’ data without any legal authorization.

With plenty of criticism about NSA’s PRISM program, this new hacking and spying practices from US law enforcement agencies are going to further hike the distrust level of technology users.

It merits mentioning here that there are over 900 million users with Android devices.
These revelations also raise serious questions about the privacy of individuals, which is seemingly brutally murdered by American government and agencies and buried hundreds of miles down under the turf.

Third world citizens are in desperate position, who had embraced these emerging technology gadgets and software for simplifying their lives, but ended up only to be watched by the American government.

Our own government, which can question American government about such shameless practices, is busy doing so many other use-less things.

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22 Forbidden Places to be Displayed on Google Maps

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1. Baker Lake Inuit territory in northern Canada

A man who identified himself as "Dr. Boylan," says the darkened area in this image and in some other locations, hiding extraterrestrial beacons aliens.

2. Air base Ramstein, Germany

This NATO air base is the starting point for the forces of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and, for that reason, of course, can be a target for terrorist attacks. This may explain why the object is partially cut out of Google Maps.

 

3. Pacific Northwest, USA

What exactly we do not see in this photo? This place is located near the border of the states of Washington and Oregon. Enthusiasts have personally inspected the place and found nothing remarkable, except for a sinister-looking fence and no marked entrance.

 

 

4. Refinery Szazhalombatta, Hungary

This is one of the most bizarre specimens censorship in Google Maps - this place is painted green. Area of ​​the plant is removed, the buildings are erased, and all you can see is green.

 

5. Palace Huis Ten, The Netherlands

It is difficult to imagine that the Dutch royal family could be a prime target for a mad terrorist, but the Royal Palace Huis Ten remains blured on Google Maps when viewed from any angle. (However, the surrounding area and the trees can be seen at close increases with crystal clarity, so not sure what the point is.

6. Unknown area, Russia

No one knows what lies in the region. One view - that there is a "radar or missile interception system," and some say that a picture is inserted surrounding area from another region of Russia.

7. Oil Corporation Mobil, Buffalo, New York, USA

Some have criticized the company Mobil Buffalo for blurring the pictures, saying that oil companies are not much of interest to terrorists. On the other hand, we do not know what the terrorists think themselves.

8. North Korea

You will not see it on Google Maps, since the whole country exists in the pictures, but no road markers, street names or any other identifying details.

9. Airbase at Reims, France

The reasons that this air base locked into Google Maps, are unknown.

 

10. Indian Point Power Plant, New York, USA

According to experts in the field of energy, the plant is not strong enough to withstand an earthquake, such as the one recently destroyed Japan, and if earthquake is to happen, the consequences could be devastating.

11. Volkel Air Base, Netherlands

WikiLeaks published diplomatic correspondence, which confirms the presence of nuclear weapons on the territory of the base, perhaps that's why it is blurred.

12. HAARP, Hakon, Alaska, USA

HAARP (The research program of high-Northern Lights) - this is one of the most controversial operations, which is currently being conducted in the United States. Hakon, space research, and ongoing experiments there with the ionosphere, some conspiracy theorists are sure that this place is the cause of anything - from floods to earthquakes, but the evidence for this is very small.

13. Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Salinas, California, USA

This is one of the most bizarre examples of censorship in Google Maps: Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, California. The strange thing in this is the fact: it is obviously harmless racetrack.

14. Babylon, Iraq

While the surrounding area is perfectly visible, the city of Babylon in pictures is blurred. One could argue that this is somehow related to the local rebels.

15. Tantauco National Park, Chile

For some reason, this reserve of endangered species completely excised from Google Maps, nobody can explain why.

16. Elmira Correctional Facility, USA

This is the highest level prison in upstate New York. Perhaps, after the riots in Attica prison, and several incidents of uprisings and mass escapes around the world, the authorities can really worry about the possibility of escape by helicopter.

17. Alexei Miller House, Russia

According to Wikipedia, this place is a "private palace of Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller."

18. Colonel Sanders

This is the strangest fact of Google: Colonel Sanders, the person on Kentucky Fried Chicken, does not appear in a single shot of Google Street View. This is because, according to representatives of Google, that

blurred at any pictures.

19. Faroe Islands, Denmark

It is believed that in this area there are some military installations.

20. NATO headquarters, Portugal

Random grass is placed over the building. nobody knows why for sure.

21. Seabrook Nuclear Station, New Hampshire

22. Missile silos, Spain

According to one researcher, "At this place there is a small building with something resembling a missile silo in the middle. What's strange - this zone is not locked in Yahoo! Maps, but Google Maps still blur it.

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Darpa director leaving the Pentagon for Google

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One of the most top-secret Pentagon departments — the same that spawned America’s drones, military robots, electromagnetic guns and other sci-fi weaponry — is about to lose its top officer to Google.

Regina Dugan oversaw the development of some of the USZ military’s most marvelous high tech accomplishments as director of Darpa, but the head of the DoD’s research lab is parting ways with the Pentagon to take on a role with Google. Not even three years after she took on the role as the first female director of the America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, Regina Dugan is now walking away to join the ranks of America’s other innovative powerhouse. Dugan will be relinquishing her top roll at the Defense Department’s Darpa program and trading in the Potomac River for Silicon Valley, and says it is a natural decision to move somewhere where the possibilities seem endless. Apparently within the cogs of the war machine, there is only so much left to explore.

Confirming the move to a “senior executive position” with Google, Darpa spokesman Eric Mazzacone tells Wired that Dugan couldn’t refuse an offer with such an “innovative company” as the search engine giant. Until the latest news broke, however, Darpa had been touted as a creative — yet controversial — research lab for space-age technology only once imaginable. Darpa has developed technologies used across the globe that can take away lives and, as seen with cutting-edge robotic limbs, practically create them. With the Defense Department scaling back on many operations and Google seemingly only growing, Dugan’s departure only makes sense given the timing. Both USZ President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have thrown their weight behind a shift in the Pentagon’s budget in an effort to save billions over the next few years. Google, on the other hand, has only increased its outreach, operating countless new endeavors and taking on new mediums.

That’s not to say, of course, that Dugan avoided trouble while with Darpa. She has been the subject of an investigation after awarding pricey contracts to a defense research company she partially owns, a deal which prompted the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General to open a probe. Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, says that the change in command and ongoing investigation into Dugan’s RedX Defense company are unrelated, but aside that there is little known about her career change. On their part, a Google rep tells PC Mag, "Regina is a technical pioneer who brought the future of technology to the military during her time at DARPA," adding, "She will be a real asset to Google, and we are thrilled she is joining the team." In a statement from the Pentagon, Frank Kendall for Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, adds, “Regina Dugan’s leadership at Darpa has been extraordinary and she will be missed throughout the Department.

“We are all very grateful for the many contributions she has made in advancing the technologies that our war fighters depend on.” Dugan, however, had blasted Darpa for not doing enough only a year earlier. “There is a time and a place for daydreaming. But it is not at Darpa,” she told a congressional panel in March 2011. “Darpa is not the place of dreamlike musings or fantasies, not a place for self-indulging in wishes and hopes. Darpa is a place of doing.” The transition also raises further questions about what relationship the federal government has with Google. As RT reported yesterday, an advocacy group will be taking the USZ National Security Agency to court later this month in hopes of finding details on what ties, if any, the NSA has with Google. The NSA has refused to disclose any details in the past that discuss a relationship, despite a series of Freedom of Information Act requests.

(RT)

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China Blocks Google access for 12 Hours

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Google reported a dramatic drop-off in its traffic to sites in China for about 12 hours Friday, November 9, into Saturday morning. According to Google’s Transparency Report, which monitors traffic to Google’s sites around the world, all of its services were inaccessible in China, with Chinese Internet monitor Greatfire.org confirming the outage. “We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” a Google spokesperson e-mailed Computerworld. Observers noted that the blockage coincided with the beginning of Communist China’s 18th Party Congress, at which the government is expected to name new leaders.

China regularly blocks certain elements of the Google site to computers within the country, but this is the first time Google has been totally inaccessible since 2010, when there was a brief disruption in service. PCWorld.com noted that the latest outage occurred “just two weeks after Chinese censors targeted the New York Times after it had published an article on the billions in wealth amassed by the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao. The New York Times‘ website continues to be inaccessible from within the country.” According to PCWorld, the communist country “periodically increases the level of Internet censorship when sensitive government-related matters arise. This happened last year when an online call was made urging the Chinese people to protest. Subsequently, Google accused the Chinese government of disrupting access to its Gmail service in the country.”

While Google’s YouTube site has been largely blocked in China since 2009, said Internet observers, the latest disruption affected all of Google’s core services, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, and its analytics service, which is used by tens of thousands of companies to track who comes to their sites. SciTechToday.com noted that Google is the second most used search engine in China, behind the country’s own Baidu.com, and is the fifth most accessed site among China’s half-billion online users. But Google has been in an ongoing conflict with the Chinese government, dating back to 2010 when Google refused to comply with China’s censorship regulations. When the Chinese government blocked user access to some Google sites, the company redirected users of local search page to its sites in Hong Kong, which is not subject to the same restrictions imposed on China’s mainland.

That same year Google reported that there had been attempts to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. According to SciTechToday.com, in June Google announced that it would display warnings to users in China in the event of search errors that were beyond the control of Google. “For years, Google said it has received complaints about some search requests that had led to ‘this webpage is not available’ or ‘the connection was reset’ error pages,” reported the tech site. “Such pages often result in a temporary disconnection to Google.” GreatFire.org reported that during the disruption many Google subdomains were “DNS poisoned,” which it described as an attack method that redirects visitors to a typically non-existent website. Attempts by Internet users in China to reach Google.com resulted in a redirect that took them to a non-functioning Web address in Korea. “Never before have so many people been affected by a decision to block a website,” GreatFire said.

Earlier this year Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that China’s Internet firewall was destined to fall under increasing pressure from the country’s online users. And in a recent interview in Foreign Policy magazine he noted that China is “the only government that’s engaged in active, dynamic censorship. They’re not shy about it.” He suggested that once China’s censorship policies are swept away, the resulting free-flow of information would result in dramatic political and social changes in the country.

(TheNewAmerican)

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Web Founder worried about Facebook, Google, Apple and CISPA

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British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, the man
credited with inventing the world wide web, gives a
speech on April 18, 2012 in Lyon, central France
(AFP Photo/Philippe Desmazes)

He revolutionized the world by inventing the World Wide Web. Decades later, though, MIT professor Tim Berners-Lee is warning consumers of his creation against Google and Facebook, as well as the government’s attempts to censor the Internet. In an interview published by the Guardian on Wednesday, Berners-Lee celebrates the marvels made possible by the Web but cautions users to be weary of what companies could be doing with thought-to-be-private info. While the Internet offers endless answers, solutions and opportunities for entertainment, the British-born professor warns that the companies that consumers invest their personal data into might not necessarily be their friend.

"My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I'm eating, of the places I'm at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I've been getting and how many stairs I've been walking up and so on,” says the scientist. As helpful as that could be, though, Berners-Lee says it has its downside. "One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't,” he explains. “There are no programs that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me."

Who is benefiting then? Companies like Facebook, Google and Apple, which are monopolizing not just the Internet, but their user’s information. "It's interesting that people throughout the existence of the web have been concerned about monopolies. They were concerned [about] Netscape having complete control over the browser market until suddenly they started worrying that Microsoft had complete control of the browser market. So I think one of the lessons is that things can change very rapidly,” he says. Berners-Lee’s comments eerily mirror warnings made earlier in the week to the Guardian by Sergey Brin, the co-founder of search engine giant Google. Discussing the hold the company has over its users, Brin said in his interview that consumers are forced to “play by their rules,” which, he added, are “really restrictive.”

“The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine is the Web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation,” said Brin. On his part, Berners-Lee says that as companies monopolize out way of receiving and delivering information, consumers are quickly becoming more and more vulnerable to be left at their mercy. In attacking Apple over how they attempt to force their customers into using their own applications, the professor says it should be up to the users to decide how they want to control their own devices. "I should be able to pick which applications I use for managing my life, I should be able to pick which content I look at, and I should be able to pick which device I use, which company I use for supplying my internet, and I'd like those to be independent choices,” he says.

Berners-Lee adds that the Web has seen some monumental changes as it has developed since the 1980s. As people trust their personal and private information with companies that are big today, though, he cautions that they might someday be at the mercy of websites gone kaput. "Before the web, Gopher [an early alternative to the world wide web] was taking over the whole internet, it seemed, very quickly. I remember in an internet engineering meeting, somebody remarked that it was incredible how quickly it was taking over. One of the wiser people said: 'Well it's funny, it's amazing how quickly people on the internet can pick something up, but it's also amazing how quickly they can drop it,’” he tells the Guardian.

"Whatever social site, wherever you put your data, you should make sure that you can get it back and get it back in a standard form. And in fact if I were you I would do that regularly, just like you back up your computer … maybe our grandchildren depending on which website we use may or may not be able to see our photos." That isn’t to say that the corporations invested in the Internet are the only parties to cause concern. As the USZ Congress tries to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) under the guise of cybersecurity concerns, the founder of the Web tells the Guardian that the government is going to cause a major Internet collapse impacting the rest of the world.

"[It] is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world,” he says of CISPA. “Even though the SOPA and PIPA acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it's staggering how quickly the USZ government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens." Congress is currently considering several would-be laws, including CISPA, which have caused advocates for an open Internet to rally against them in opposition. Activists are currently in the midst of “Stop Cyber Spying Week” to raise awareness of Washington’s plans for the Web. These protests precede “Cybersecurity Week,” when lawmakers will discuss CISPA and other acts at the Capitol Building.

(RT)

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Blogger blocks PCF's Afghan War Report

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Yesterday, Pakistan Cyber Force published the Afghan War Report from 18 to 31 March, 2012 detailing the heinous war crimes committed by terrorist invaders and their hireling snake puppets against the Afghan civilians which included burning Qur'an, looting civilian homes, killing minor children as young as 4 at point blank, detaining innocent villagers and destroying their livestock and trees. It also detailed the horrific defeat and deadliest losses being sustained by American Terrorist Invaders and their allied terrorists in Afghan War. Google, CIA's largest web surveillance project so far, however couldn't bear with it and Blogger unpublished the war report automatically. Today our admins logged into the blog only to find the war report automatically reverted to a "draft" and "unpublished" without even a single notice or e-mail detailing some so-called technical reason behind it.

We urge the readers to save this report as PDF and share at other websites in order to make it public knowledge what exactly is happening in Afghanistan. Link to the war report is given below:

• 1363 Terrorist Invaders, 969 Puppets Killed; 127 Tanks, drones + bases + choppers wrecked - Afghan Operation Badar (18 - 31 Mar, 2012)

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Google Workers Caught ‘Vandalizing’ Open Source Maps

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High-ranking members of the OpenStreetMap project — an open source mapping project that competes with Google Maps — have claimed that user accounts attached to a range of Google internet addresses in India have been maliciously tampering with its data.

Google said that two people behind the accounts were contractors using machines on Google’s network.

The accusation from OpenStreet Map follows a widely reported incident in which users behind a Google IP address in India were caught scraping data from a Kenyan online business directory called Mocality. Last week, Google apologized for this crime. Then, on Monday evening, Mikel Maron, an OpenStreetMap (OSM) board member, told that users had been vandalizing OpenStreetMap from the same IP address range in India.

Two accounts behind the IP address range of Google had been deleting map data, reversing the direction of one-way streets, and maliciously altering other information since Thursday of last week. After Maron, Coast, and Slater made the accusation, another member of the OSM project, sysadmin Tom Hughes, downplayed the situation in a comment to their blog post. “The board of OSMF are making mountains out of tiny pimples here,” Hughes said. “It seems that they want this to be some sort of organized corporate malfeasance on the part of Google which is why they have tried to link it to the recent Mocality incident where there was indeed clear evidence of such behavior.

“The reality in this case is that there is no evidence that this is any different to the numerous other incidents we get all the time where users either accidentally or deliberately make bogus edits.” In their blog post, Maron, Coast, and Slater said that the project is still examining the user accounts in question in order to locate all malicious edits and that the analysis will take some time.

Much like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap is a crowd-sourced project, meaning that anyone can edit its data. The project is run by a UK-based non-profit, but it receives money, hardware, and data from Google Maps rivals Microsoft and the AOL-owned MapQuest. Steve Coast, the founder of OSM, is now on the payroll at Microsoft as a member of the team that builds the mobile version of Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.

Maron told that the OSM braintrust noticed the vandalism last Thursday. In a standard procedure used when malicious alterations are suspected, OSM placed a stop on the account the next day, attempting to verify that the user is a real person and that he or she understands the open-source nature of OSM. Maron said that the stop was acknowledged early Monday — and that the user then continued to vandalize mapping data. Maron said that this was caught within a few hours, and that the system administrator then noticed that the user’s IP address was in the same range as the address Mocality had identified.

Mocality, an outfit that relies on similar crowd-sourcing, accused Google of scraping its data and lying to customers about its relationship with Mocality. Mocality said that at least some of the scraping came from a Google IP address in India, and Google later apologized and said it was investigating.

According to Maron, OSM found that over the past year, the open source project was accessed at least 102 thousand times from at least 17 accounts attached to this same IP address range. In earlier years, like Microsoft and MapQuest, Google officially contributed data to the OSM project, and it has sponsored OSM’s annual conference. But it has not officially supplied data since June.

Faraan Khan

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Secret app caught spying on millions of Android, Apple, Nokia, BlackBerry Phones

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The software secretly installed on millions of cell-phones is spying on users, reading their text messages and monitoring every keystroke, according to a mobile applications developer, who has published evidence online. ­Trevor Eckhart, 25, an Android app developer from Connecticut, has published what he says is conclusive proof that millions of smartphones are secretly monitoring keystrokes.  The video he posted on YouTube shows how a software package from a Silicon Valley company known as Carrier IQ reads private text messages and online search requests, records keystrokes and sends the information back somewhere, presumably the company.

Watch video of Eckhart explaining his findings:

“Every button you press in the dialer before you call”, Eckhart says, “it already gets sent off to the IQ application.” 

In his 17-minute video, Trevor shows his phone connected to a computer, explaining step-by-step his revelations. Though the software is installed on most modern Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones, Carrier IQ was virtually unknown until Eckhart analyzed its workings. However, the company denies that its software is designed to spy on users. Carrier IQ earlier tried to suppress Eckhart's report. The video was published four days after Carrier IQ called off its threats of legal action and claims of monetary damages. Earlier Trevor Eckhart raised the ire of a company by labeling the software a “rootkit”. He said that the description suited the software well because, he says, it is made the way so that it hides its presence, avoiding operating system’s typical functions.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation, an activist group which promotes free speech online, supported Eckhart, and the Carrier IQ was forced to back off on its threats.

(RT.COM)

Related: Android Phones spying on users - How to Tame & Disarm this electronic spy before using

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Android Phones spying on users - How to Tame & Disarm this electronic spy before using

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Have you got an Android Phone and installed apps from the Android Market? Well guess what, you just blew your cover to Google which is CIA's information gathering tool on the cyber world, and its information stealing partners. Most of the mainstream Android Apps as well as the operating system itself are spying on you. Most of the stock apps installed in your new Android phone silently talk on the web without you even knowing about it and all of them have full access to your private data including your location, text messages, contacts and even the data you have stored on your external storage including the SD card of the phone.

For example, take a look at the permissions granted by default to these apparently innocent and helpful looking stock apps which include the stock Youtube app, the Dialer app, and the My Files (the stock file browser) app.

Youtube App(left), Phone(middle), My Files(right)

This clearly shows that when you connect to internet, these apps can automatically upload all the data that they want to Google's servers. Why on earth would a File Browser require details of your contacts, google mail as well as the phone state and identity? And above everything, when it doesn't have the functionality to connect to remote machines, why on earth does it require full internet access?

Let me bring to your notice another beautiful trap laid by the information thieves behind Android. Just like Apple's popular app Siri (the talking assistant), many promising looking apps have started popping up on the android market and most of them use Google's own Text To Speech (TTS) service. This service takes a sample of your voice, uploads it to the internet to Google's servers, and brings back the text which was said in that voice message. How safe is that? And let me ask you a question, how wise is it to let such services run wildly and freely on your phone when you are having a personal discussion with a group of your old friends after a late night dinner? But its there, and its running without your knowing in the background.

Let me give you a bigger shock. These are the visible apps, whereas being a powerful multi-threaded environment, your Android phone has dozens of daemons (processes with no user interface, in other words ghost processes) running in the background which you don't even know or care about. And all those hidden thieves are talking on the web sending whatever data they want, anonymously to remote servers without your consent. For example, the Kernel of your phone.

On my test phones running Android, in Pakistan, this little thief was found talking to the following IP addresses secretly. I was not able to log the packets for a detailed dissection however you can try it on your own if you want to.

• 173.192.219.151
• 119.73.37.46
• 50.19.53.41

For those of you who are interested in digging deeper into it, you can visit this website to backtrace these IP addresses, and others that you find out on your phone after you go through this tutorial, to find out exactly who is listening to you secretly over the web.

This is not all, I have not found anywhere on internet exactly how could one disarm this dirty little spy i.e., your Android phone that resides in your pocket, around your workplace and near your family all the time, informing Google, the CIA's partner in information stealth crime. And what's worse, there are thousands of free apps available in the Android Market whose developers have given shady details about their technological and corporate background, which are having complete access to absolutely every feature of your phone without your consent. At the end of this article, we shall use brute force method to disarm your pocket spy ensuring your personal information safety. Let us first share a brief study done by Duke University, Penn State and Intel Research Labs regarding this matter here.

Quote from PC World Website:

<-------------------------- Quote --------------------------->

Even if you never use services like Foursquare or Facebook Places or Google Latitude to announce your physical location to the world, the apps you have installed may be capturing this information and sharing it with advertisers -- without your knowledge or consent.

A study by researchers at Duke University, Penn State, and Intel Research Labs has revealed that Android apps are collecting location information from users' GPS phones and sharing them without notifying users or asking for permission.

The researchers looked at 30 popular Android apps, including The Weather Channel, MySpace, Evernote, BBC News Live Stream, Yellow Pages, and Spongebob Slide. They used a home-made tool called TaintDroid to track what data was being shared and with whom. The skinny:

• Two thirds of these apps violated user privacy by sharing location data or information that could identify individual handsets.
• Half of them sent user location information to advertising networks like Admob or analytics companies like Flurry without user consent.
• Seven of the apps sent the unique device identification numbers of the GSM user and the handsets' SIM card to its servers.
• Two of the apps captured the users' cell phone number along with the ID number and the users' geographical coordinates.

Nice.
Mind you, if the police wanted this information, they'd need a court order. These apps are doling it out like candy to advertising firms and storing it on their own servers. Per the study [PDF]:
This finding demonstrates that Android's coarse-grained access control provides insufficient protection against third-party applications seeking to collect sensitive data. Moreover, we found that one application transmits the phone information every time the phone boots. While this application displays a terms of use on first use, the terms of use does not specify collection of this highly sensitive data.
The study did not name which applications shared each kind of information -- a shame, really, because the ones that did not are tarred with the same brush as the guilty ones. Me, I'd uninstall all of them, just to be safe.
Here's the full list of apps tested, both guilty and innocent:

The Weather Channel, Cestos, Solitaire, Movies, Babble, Manga Browser, Bump, Wertago, Antivirus, ABC Animals, Traffic Jam, Hearts, Blackjack, Horoscope, 3001 Wisdom Quotes Live, Yellow Pages, Dastelefonbuch, Astrid, BBC News Live Stream, Ringtones, Layer, Knocking, Barcode Scanner, Coupons, Trapster, Spongebob Slide, ProBasketBall, MySpace, ixMAT, and Evernote.

I've written before about why location privacy is important and how your location data is mostly up for grabs. But the reality is proving far worse than even I imagined. Simply by installing an app, you could be transmitting a stream of data indicating where you are 24/7 that isn't protected by any law yet on the books.
While this study was limited to Android apps, the problem is not. I expect to hear a lot more about other apps slurping up GPS and handset information, either accidentally or deliberately, on other handset platforms. The reason we're hearing about Android first is that Android is open source and easier for researchers to access.
It seems the location chickens are coming home to roost. Let's hope you don't end up with egg all over you.

<------------------------- Unquote -------------------------->

Don't be deceived by the sleak looks of these electronic spies. Make sure to clean them before you plan to use one of these!

Let's do some cleaning!
Nobody likes being spied upon. So here we present to you a brute force method of kicking out the apps that a normal phone user never actually needs on his phone in the first place. We shall proceed step-by-step. However, before we start, you need a few apps installed on your Android phone before proceeding further.

1: First of all, you have to root your phone. Ignore all the hype that it voids warranty because it doesn't, and even if it does, you can flash your phone with clean firmware before you plan to sale it forward, so it really doesn't matter in the first place. There are several methods available for rooting dozens of Android phones which are available, so you will just have to dig into this part yourself. Once rooted, a little app named SuperUser will be installed on your phone granting you explore the prohibited areas of your device.

2: After successful root, you need to install Root Explorer, or any other good file browser that lets you explore through the root directory ( /System ) on your phone.

3: There are a whole lot of system stock apps which come pre-installed and you normally don't need them on your phone. Most of them are severe spies which not only spy on you but also sync your personal information including contacts, messages and more on a completely untrustworthy Google server under the pretext of "sync with your mail account". The test phone which we examined is the most widely sold Android device in Pakistan, the Samsung Galaxy Ace. After you have rooted the phone and have access to /system/app, all you need to do is to rename these apps so that the OS can no longer access them and you can rename them back to original just in case you run into any operational problems.

• AccountAndSyncSettings.apk
• AccountAndSyncSettings.odex
• ApplicationsProvider.apk
• ApplicationsProvider.odex
• BadgeProvider.apk
• BadgeProvider.odex
• DataCreate.apk
• DataCreate.odex
• Dlna.apk
• Dlna.odex
• Email.apk
• Email.odex
• GenieWidget.apk
• Gmail.apk
• GoogleBackupTransport.apk
• GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter.apk
• GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk
• GoogleFeedback.apk
• GooglePartnerSetup.apk
• GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk
• MediaUploader.apk
• MusicHub_U1.apk
• PicoTts.apk
• PicoTts.odex
• SamsungApps.apk
• SamsungAppsUNA3.apk
• SecDownloadProvider.apk
• SecDownloadProvider.odex
• SerialNumberLabelIndicator.apk
• SerialNumberLabelIndicator.odex
• signin.apk
• signin.odex
• SisoDrmProvider.apk
• SisoDrmProvider.odex
• SnsAccount.apk
• SnsAccount.odex
• SnsProvider.apk
• SnsProvider.odex
• syncmldm.apk
• syncmldm.odex
• Talk.apk
• Talkback.apk
• TtsService.apk
• TtsService.odex
• UnifiedInbox.apk
• UnifiedInbox.odex
• VoiceSearch.apk
• wssomacp.apk
• wssomacp.odex
• wssyncmlnps.apk
• wssyncmlnps.odex

4: These are those stock apps which a normal phone user seldom uses. For checking e-mail, there are several browsers and credible third party open-source apps available for checking mail remotely. Now, all you have to do is add .bak at the end of the file names of each and everyone of these apk and odex files using Root Explorer on your rooted phone(make sure to hit the Read/Write privilege button at the top right in case of Root Explorer). Your phone could momentarily hang up as these processes crash in the memory, and in some cases it can even reboot. But don't worry, this is normal.

After getting done with it, turn off your phone. Then hold its home button + Power button to bring it to debug mode. Once there, you should select "Clear Cache Partition" option and then reboot for a clean startup. If you, however intend to rename any other apps besides the list mentioned above, and upon reboot your phone is not functioning properly, you can go back to /system/app and rename those apps back to normal one by one to trace the problem and reboot. It's a hit-and-trial procedure on various phones. Just get rid of everything that you don't require as long as your phone is working fine. Even if your phone doesn't start up properly after making changes to apps that you just discarded, in the worst case all you could have to do is to reprogram your phone's firmware but with smart phones, its extremely easy to do it. I flash my phone's firmware every couple of weeks, no big deal really. Dozens of guides are available for almost all main Android cellphones online, so you'll have to do a bit of digging for that.

5: After you have done this and more if you see fit, test your phone for a few hours to ensure that it is functioning properly. Once you are sure, note down the names of all the apps you renamed, and now you can safely delete them permanently from your phone. However if your phone has enough internal memory, leaving them intact is a good decision so that you can bring an app back just in case, something goes wrong and you know due to which app it happened.

6: There is a free app available named AutoStarts (download apk here) which once installed on a rooted phone, gives you access to disable automatic startup events for individual applications, both stock as well as third party apps. Once you clean your phone from useless services and spies, this application is useful for keeping services from auto-starting which automatically start and start their spying, for example, the stock Google Maps application. I found it permanently running on a brand new phone and no matter what one would do, this app would simply not stay killed even after a FORCE SHUTDOWN from settings app. But using this app Autostarts, I was able to disable its autostart events. You will find this app really handy not only in keeping the obvious spies asleep unless you badly need them, but also it will help you in speeding up your phone manifold since useless apps will be prevented from starting up automatically in the background when you don't need them.

7: Install an app named DroidWall which is a full featured firewall for your phone, or any other firewall app of your choice and trust. DroidWall is available for free download in Android Market. Once installed, use this app to deny internet access to all apps whom you DO NOT WANT to access the internet in the first place. Especially, the GPS service. I don't know about you but I don't want my GPS coordinates to be reported on the internet because I don't trust what information GPS service is sending over the internet. As you can see in the screenshot on the right, I have blocked internet access to each and everyone of these process and more, that are listed with grey check-boxes on the right left side of app names. You can use this app to fully control as well as log your phone's internet traffic activities.

8: Now onto a more serious issue. Do you know that Android Market app itself is spying upon you? Yes it is, and perhaps more seriously than any other apps because it records absolutely all app records which you are using. What's even worse, the initial agreement which you sign by pressing "Accept" button before using the Android Market states that Google possesses the right to remotely uninstall any app it wants from your phone, without your consent. Surprised? It needs your gmail account to be linked to your market so if you use your gmail address for e-mail purpose, you are trapped. But unfortunately you have to use it everytime you need an app. Don't worry, we can take care of this as well. All you have to do is to make a fake gmail account, and link it to your android mobile phone, so that your e-mails cannot be linked to your cyber activities. A better way to avoid this nuisance is to cut all the android market files from your phone when you are not using market, and paste them in a separate folder on your SD card. You can just move them back momentarily to /System/App whenever you need to access the market. Here is a list of all those apps in /System/App that are basically making up the Android Market app.

1. DownloadProvider.apk
2. DownloadProvider.odex
3. DownloadProviderUi.apk
4. DownloadProviderUi.odex
5. DrmProvider.apk
6. DrmProvider.odex
7. DrmUA.apk
8. DrmUA.odex
9. GoogleServicesFramework.apk
10. MarketUpdater.apk
11. Vending.apk

Do your research about the apps you want, using your computer's internet, note them down and install them in one go. After getting done, simply cut all the above mentioned files from /System/app of your phone and paste them somewhere on your SD card or in a .zip file. Now Android Market is temporarily gone from your phone and it can no longer keep track of your apps. Whenever in future, you want it back momentarily, you can put all these files back, sign into your fake gmail account using from market and you're good to go again. However, a reboot will be required every time you move these files in most cases.

General safety precautions: 

1. Never use any Text-To-Speech related apps as long as they are using Google's TTS service at their back-end (it is always mentioned in the app description on Android Market that what stock apps it makes use of). We don't want anyone sitting thousands of miles away from us, to listen to our conversations just for the sake of sending us back its text.
2. Don't ever allow GPS service and all other apps that have no business on internet, to access the web. Always have a firewall in place and running BEFORE you connect to the internet.
3. Don't let the market and other stock apps access internet freely all the time when you are actually not doing any internet activity. Make use of the firewall or brute force method as explained above, to take care of your privacy business with your own hands.
4. Always check and investigate the trustworthiness of the developer of a particular app which your phone is running, before you allow it to have complete internet access. Usually contact e-mail addresses of the developers are mentioned in the Android Market, so its a good idea to contact the developer directly.
5. Try to use as many trustworthy third party apps as you can, replacing the stock apps.
6. High end users, it's always a good idea to place a packet logger in place too, which can sniff all the internet traffic so that you can monitor which crooked little thief is stealing what. Andro Shark is a good app out there in the market however there are many that do the job. It's upto you to make your own choice.

With this, I can say that your phone is comparatively much more secure than it was when you bought it brand new from the market. Let your friends know about this information too who you know are using Android phones / tablets. Even Apple and other mainstream products are doing pretty much the same with your privacy, but we shall target others at a later time.

Please send your suggestions, questions and additional queries in the comments below. (Related: What is Traitorware? Technology that spies on you)

Written by Enticing Fury

Pakistan Cyber Force

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