Last week it was discovered that a number of popular iPhone apps were invading users’ privacy and uploading entire address books to external servers. The data uploaded included full names, phone numbers and email addresses, and the offending apps never asked for permission to transfer this sensitive data. A group of researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the International Security Systems Lab began a study last year to discover how and where iPhone apps were transmitting data,...

In a move that should surprise no one, Apple has banned the “Big Brother Camera Security” app that developer Daniel Amity used to swipe his customers’ passcodes. BGR reported on Tuesday about an application that attempted to trick users into setting a passcode identical to the pin used to lock their iPhones. The app then transmitted the PIN numbers in the background to the developer — albeit anonymously — who used them to publish a report covering the most commonly used iPhone passcodes. While t...

Google on Thursday finally took the wraps off its Google Wallet and Google Offers services, which offer an NFC-based contactless payment system married with a location-based local coupon service. On the same day, eBay and its online payment arm PayPal filed a lawsuit against Google and two of its executives for stealing trade secrets relating to mobile payments. Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, both of whom were heavily involved in the development of the Google Wallet service, were named in the suit. Beid...

HP on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Adrian Jones, the company’s former head of enterprise sales for the Asia region, to stop him from sharing hundreds of documents he allegedly stole before leaving the company and joining his current employer, Oracle. HP said it had planned to fire Jones earlier this year after having launched an investigation into his expense reports and his alleged relationship with another HP employee who worked beneath him. Jones left the company, however, and HP alleges that he...

As sad as it is, it should be no surprise to anyone that theft is a pretty regular occurrence in the electronics industry. Though most mobile retailers take plenty of measures to prevent losses, it’s not possible to keep it from happening 100% of the time. When you’re dealing with third-party retailers and authorized dealers it really becomes difficult to keep all inventory safe as the carrier. So, Rogers is allegedly going to begin taking advantage of an EIR, or Equipment Identity Register, which...