How in control are you of your own “smart” phone?

 

I have been wanting to write about this for a while now and been postponing it due to recent commitments at work and thus the lack of free time.

First of all I’d like to state that I am no security expert nor I claim to be an electronics geek but what I’m going to show you is more of what I stumbled on randomly at the beginning and decided to look further into it afterwards.

Skipping the smartphones introduction and the way they changed our lives, the way we’ve slowly become dependent on these devices that we now require them for the simplest of our daily tasks. I am going to go straight to the point of this post.

In the intention of finding an app that changes/alters the permissions given to an app to function on my phone, I instead found an app that lists you all permissions given to installed apps on your smartphones.

For those who still don’t know what we’re talking about, permissions are what an app asks you to grant it upon installation after you download it. Most of us including myself until recently, skip these steps by pressing NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT OPEN.

So the application I found is called  App Permission Watcher (click for download)

This app scans all applications on your phone for “suspicious apps” judging by the permissions these apps require.

Here are some screenshots from  App Permission Watcher of apps one could’ve never suspected to be suspicious or malicious.

So let us start with EVERNOTE, my favorite place to write notes.. Neat and nice interface and is used by millions worldwide.

It appears that Evernote (as shown in picture above) can relay your contact data allowing itself to send all contact information over the internet. One could say that’s cool, I don’t mind someone knowing my contacts but why does Evernote want to know my movement profile? Allowing it to track my position anytime anywhere and without my permission?! Fine again, one could argue that I don’t care if someone knew where I was and when.. It’s fine. But can someone please explain why evernote can use my phone as a covert listening device?!! They can actually listen to our phone calls and use our device microphone to record audio clips and send them over the internet without! I repeat again, WITHOUT our permission.

Now just as you’d think they’ve done it all, you learn that they can use your device camera to send data over the internet, which can be used to watch the field of view of your phone at anytime, without you finding out. Cool eh?

same goes for our beloved facebook and whatsapp apps

only whatsapp can send sms from your phone to anyone without your permission and without you even finding out about it..

but my biggest surprise came when I checked my what supposed to be ANTIVIRUS / ANTISPAM / ANTITHEFT / ANTIFRAUD app…

sadly this app simply takes full control of your phone and can and probably is or will hurt you in many ways.

AVG antivirus app can:

1- share your contacts

2- share your location

3- make phone calls

4- send and relay sms messages

but most dangerously… this app can FALSIFY sms messages sent TO YOUR PHONE such (as explained by the next pic) mTAN codes sent to your phone by online banking services and could lead to an attacker getting into your bank account.

pretty shocking and unbelievable in some cases but that doesn’t mean all apps are malicious..

For example the google drive, translate, hotmail and Instagram apps require only contact info and usually that kind of info is used to add your friends on these services.

To conclude this, there are many ways that these permissions YOU yourself allow these apps to have can be used against you. A simple example which some might call an exaggeration is the capability for a hacker/security expert to place you somewhere perhaps a crime scene without the possibility for you to deny that claim.

Another example would be to send sms or make a call on your behalf that could lead to financial, social or even physical harm.

Next time you are installing an application on your phone, make sure you read the permissions you are giving it.

Knowing that most apps require these permissions to allow you to install them on your phone, a way to come around this is to install an application called SRT appguard PRO which allows you to alter applications permissions AFTER you install them and thus being able to deny them any undesirable permissions and privileges.

The new Nokia lumia 800 > Iphone and HTC??

Also known as Nokia Sea Ray

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 – RM-819
		HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100 – RM-801 CV
	Announced	2011, October
	Status	Available. Released 2011, November

BODY	Dimensions	116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm, 76.1 cc
	Weight	142 g
		– Touch-sensitive controls

DISPLAY	Type	AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches (~252 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
	Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass
		– Nokia ClearBlack display

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	No
	Internal	16 GB storage, 512 MB RAM

DATA	GPRS	Class 33
	EDGE	Class 33
	Speed	HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual-LED flash, check quality
	Features	Geo-tagging
	Video	Yes, 720p@30fps, check quality
	Secondary	No

FEATURES	OS	Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mango
	Chipset	Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon
	CPU	1.4 GHz Scorpion
	GPU	Adreno 205
	Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity, compass
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML5, RSS feeds
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
	Java	No
	Colors	Black, Cyan, Magenta
		– MicroSIM card support only – SNS integration – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic – MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA player – MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player – Document viewer/editor – Video/photo editor – Voice memo/command/dial – Predictive text input

BATTERY		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1450 mAh (BV-5JW)
	Stand-by	Up to 265 h (2G) / Up to 335 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 13 h (2G) / Up to 9 h 30 min (3G)
	Music play	Up to 55 h