The U.S. Army has started a pilot program on June 6th to test the effectiveness of equipping troops with tablets and phones in combat, CNN recently reported. The idea is to provide troops with the ability to send text messages and geotagged images that alert others about their current surroundings. Similarly, the infantry could use the devices to file regular reports and easily view maps, CNN said. So far, the troops have been testing the iPhone and phones powered by Windows Phone and Android, and soldiers ha...

A lawsuit has been filed against Apple, Pandora, and The Weather Channel in the U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico that alleges Apple “intentionally [intercepts] personally identifying information.” The plaintiff, Lymaris M. Rivera Diaz, is charging Apple with unfair trade practices, abuse and fraud, and he believes that Apple shares the iPhone’s unique ID, as well as personal location information, with third party developers such as The Weather Channel and Pandora. Apple’s vice presid...

Google and Apple testified before the Senate on Tuesday, where both firms were grilled on collecting location information from mobile phones. During the hearing, Senator Al Franken was particularly vocal on the issue. “My wireless companies, Apple and Google, and my apps, all get my location or something very close to it,” Senator Franken said. “We need to address this issue now, as mobile devices are only going to get more popular.” We covered Apple’s response on Tuesday, during...

While testifying before the U.S. Congress today, Apple’s vice president of software technology, Bud Tribble, tried to clarify concerns that Apple had been tracking owners of its iPhone and iPad Wi-Fi + 3G. Apple has said in the past that it does not track its users and it also recently issued iOS 4.3.3, which reduces and encrypts the crowd-sourced location database cache, but Tribble explained the story in a bit more detail:We do not share customer information with third parties without our customers&...

Apple has finally broken its week-long silence over the location-tracking database scandal surrounding iPhones and 3G iPads running iOS 4 and higher. The company states that it never has, and never plans to, track users’ iDevices, and that the purpose of the database file in question — consolidated.db — is to “help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.” The company noted that a software update will limit the size of the location file and be available ...

It looks as though software developer James Laird has opened Pandora’s box for Apple’s AirPlay music streaming system. Frustrated by the fact that an AirPort Express emulator did not exist, Laird began to look for a solution that would allow him to stream iTunes music without the use of AirPlay. “I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there’s a private key hiding inside the ApEx [Airport Extreme],” wrote Laird. “So I took it apart (I stil...

In a recent blog post, Twitter announced a new measure aimed at keeping its users data a bit more secure as it travels over the wire. Via the “Settings” preference pane, users can now force Twitter communications to always travel over a secure, HTTPS connection. “This will improve the security of your account and better protect your information if you’re using Twitter over an unsecured Internet connection,” writes Twitter. “In the future, we hope to make HTTPS the default setti...

Today, AT&T announced AT&T Encrypted Mobile Voice; “the first carrier-provided two factor encryption service for calls on the AT&T network.” The service, which will be available for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, combines KoolSpan’s TrustChip and SRA International’s One Vault Voice. As the press release explains:TrustChip is a fully hardened, self-contained crypto engine inserted into the smartphone’s microSD slot. Embedded with AT&T TrustGroup, the KoolSpa...

In accordance with government wishes, Saudi Arabia’s three mobile wireless companies have shut down BlackBerry messaging services to their users. The Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission cited security concerns when it announced on August 3rd that: “the manufacturer of the devices [RIM] couldn’t meet the regulatory requirements of the commission and it is not in accordance with the regulations and conditions of licenses issued to service providers, at its present state.” ...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has issued a statement to its customers letting them know just how secure their data is. The handset maker reminded everyone that “no one, including RIM” could access BlackBerry user data as it is encrypted without a master key, and that it would “be unable to accommodate any request” for access to the data. RIM continued, the system is designed “to exclude the capability for RIM or any third party to r...

Chatter on the forums suggests that the latest update hitting the DROID X has not fixed the WiFi connectivity problem many users were reporting. Affected DROID X owners report that their handsets have difficulty connecting to a WiFi router and poor network performance once a connection has been established. Several users report that changing the encryption from AES to TKIP has alleviated the problem, while others note that changing your router to 802.11g instead of 802.11n has decreased the number of network ...

A major security flaw has been uncovered in the Apple iPhone 3GS this week after two security experts discovered it was possible to bypass the device’s security and gain nearly full read access using Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that the two believe they’re nearing the ability to write data as well. Said Bernd Marienfeldt, one of the two gentleman responsible for uncovering the flaw:I uncovered a data protection vulnerability, which I could reproduce on 3 other non...

Remember all of the hoopla surrounding RIM’s hostile takeover of Certicom? Well the Ontario Securities Commission sure does, as it’s alleging that former RIM VP Paul Donald personally profited from the deal thanks to some insider trading. The OSC claims that back in August of 2008, Donald was attending a RIM function where RIM top brass informed him that they were actively trying to acquire the software encryption specialists Certicom — a company whose technology is used in every single Blac...

A five-month old ITC patent dispute between Research In Motion and Omaha-based Prism Technologies has been settled. Back in December of 2009, Prism had asked the ITC to block the importation of BlackBerry smartphones, servers and sofrware into the U.S. on the grounds that RIM was violating one of Prism’s patents. At the heart of the dispute was a Prism patent described as providing an “innovative way of controlling access to protected electronically stored data and information requested by a devi...