Mobile spyware generates incredibly useful data, but will people stand for it?

Here’s an interesting story. Way back in 2004, two researchers at MIT announced a new kind of cellphone. This phone would monitor you constantly, recording and learning from everything you did. By constantly tracking your location, your friends locations and your communications, it would learn the things you do every day, including when and where you did them, and who you do them with. Things have changed in the five years since then. The service has been transformed from an actual device into “logging software” - and the first results from a study using it have now been released. It makes for pretty interesting reading.

Who’s that looking in my window? It’s just the Palm Pre.

The most recent explosion of paranoia concerning mobile devices has been caused by the Palm Pre. Blogger and Debian developer Joey Hess has claimed that by digging around in the software of his Pre, he discovered that it was regularly sending information back to Palm. Information about his location, what apps he was using, and how often he was using them. The Palm privacy policy seems to cover this, but a lot of people are upset about the apparent betrayal from the phone manufacturer.

118 800 mobile phone directory crash proves just how essential opt-in is

The website for controversial mobile phone directory service 118 800 has been suspended from service. 118 800 claims the crash occurred because so many people logged on to the service to make their numbers ex-directory.

Security or invasion of privacy? MobilMine from Motolingo monitors mobile usage

Every once in a while a mobile service comes along that has truly staggering potential for invasion of privacy. These services are often extremely useful in terms of family safety or field-employee monitoring. But the “Big Brother” use they can be put to makes me nervous. Todays offering is MobilMine Pro from Motolingo, a service that monitors, records and reports on calls, emails and texts from your device. Or your childs device. Or your employees device.

Control your children! Flash Networks unleashes parental control service for mobile Internet use

Flash Networks has announced it’s new parental control service, Content Control 2.0. The web-based application offers parents a pretty comprehensive set of options to limit what kind of content a child can access over the mobile Web. The service caters to people on all points along the “control axis”, from the merely concerned all the way to the ferociously dictatorial.

Xtract claims 3D profiling will protect mobile users privacy

The FTC was asked to protect consumer privacy from mobile advertisers last week. Following this,  “3D profiling” expert Xtract has unveiled its strategy for privacy in mobile marketing.
The Xtract 3D profiling engine keeps subscriber data completely anonymous. It maps users against categories of interest, rather than making individual data visible to third parties. The categories [...]

Who owns YOUR identity? Roberto Minerva Telecom Italia

As a social media guru, I didn’t understand Roberto Minerva from Telecom Italia during the Web 2.0 conference. He spoke about things alien to me.
 
Why?

As a huge contrast to Optimus yesterday that talked about selling mobile profiles – Roberto spoke about selling privacy.
So users pay not to get advertising or to protect users from being [...]

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