In a no doubt contentious decision a US court has ruled that the fourth amendment applies to personal data, even if the device used to send it and the account belongs to a business. Effectively this means that your employer can not read your emails and text even if they are sent from a company mobile device.
Read more about the courts decision.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the RIM vs. India battle here, here, here and here already. Having already conceded defeat and given into the Indian governments demands for the keys to be able to read blackberry mail RIM appears to be now arguing that if RIM has to do it, then everyone else should as well.
Even as things seem to be heading to reach towards resolution of the issue, the security concerns and subsequent controversy over RIM’s Blackberry services in India refuse to die down. Now RIM has demanded that DoT should seek encryption code from four other mobile email solution providers in the country. The four players include Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola and Seven Networks.
The BBC warns that experts are warning mobile phone users that our days of virus-free talking boxes may be coming to an end.
2008 has seen the release of about 10 new mobile viruses and trojans, said Simon Heron, managing director of security firm Network Box.
“There are about 400 variants of mobile malware compared to in excess of 700,000 for computers,” said Mr Heron. The vast majority of viruses written for mobile phones are aimed at the Symbian mobile operating system - a consequence of its early dominance.
The fully terrifying and British article is available here.
The Register has an article that is revealing some of the practices allegedly used by U.S. customs in an article appropriate titled “your information just got permenantly cached at the US border”.
Over the past few months, several news reports have raised eyebrows after detailing border searches that involved electronic devices. The best known of them is this story from The Washington Post, which recounted the experiences of individuals who were forced to reveal data on cell phones and laptop devices when passing through US borders. One individual even reported some of the call history on her cell phone had been deleted.
The ongoing India vs RIM saga, that we’ve been keeping you up to date with here, here and here, may be coming to a, not so secure, close.
The Telegraph reports that RIM will be offering an olive branch to India’s security agencies that may see them opening up access to users emails.
Rumored among the concessions is a Blackberry server located in India and archiving messages for 6 months for India’s security agencies perusal.
Click here for the full article.
It would seem that the India vs. RIM debacle (previously discussed here and here) isn’t over yet. India is now telling Blackberry maker Research in Motion that it needs to host servers in India, presumably because then it would give it a legal foot to stand on in insisting that the traffic be opened up for perusal by India’s security agencies.
Giving into this demand could lead to other countries making similar demands of the Canadian smart phone company.
Click here for a more in depth explanation.
Here is a link to a more in depth article from The Times of India that discusses the India vs. RIM battle I mentioned earlier.
BusinessWeek now reports that the Indian government may be backing down after it had hinted that RIM may be barred from operating in the country if it didn’t allow for back door monitoring.
I stumbled upon an interesting article today about India’s spy agencies threatening to shutdown RIM unless the company releases its encryption keys to the fuzz.
I came upon a really interesting story about another online fraud trick called “Sim swoppingâ€. A sim swop refers to when a fraudster gets his hand on a victim’s phone number and then using stolen personal information contacts your cell phone company and has it assigned to a new SIM card.
What ends up happening is that the SIM card in the genuine owner’s phone is canceled, and one-time passwords used by banks to allow you to manage your money online are diverted to the SIM card in the possession of the criminals.
Banks often won’t reimburse you when money is stolen this way because they assume that you gave it away by giving away the information on a phishing site. You end up not recovering much if any of the loss.
“It is common knowledge that Internet banking users must always be aware of vulnerabilities, in most cases unknown, and never ‘feel’ safe,” [Professor Jan Eloff, head of computer science at the University of Pretoria] said. “The dilemma that we as end-users of automated environments such as Internet banking have is that the responsibility for securing your private information is becoming more and more your own responsibility.”
The full article is available here and chronicles a horror story that a couple has gone through after becoming victims of SIM swopping.
