Apple about to patent a technology that allows them to detect if your iPhone was stolen or jailbroken.

Apple has made something like a....passion from patents. The last thing they want to do is to implement a technology which can detect if your phone has been stolen. This technology should help you in case if your device was stolen by notifying you about this situation and allowing you to remotely find it. However, the situation can stay a little bit different in practice, because Apple might be able to audiovisual spy you, by detecting if somebody with a different voice or face is using the device, and shutting down the device remotely.

But what's really worse, the technology should allow Apple to identify if the device has been jailbroken and unlocked, so they might have the possibility to kill the device remotely. A line in the patent also mentions that cellular carriers could shut down or cripple the device, if it is detected as jailbroken.

That's a good news for the retail, but for the customers, it is definitely something unacceptable.

You can read more on Engadget.

Google removed remotely two applications from some Android devices. And what?

A few days ago, an announcement came officially from Google who said that they removed two applications from the Android Market. The cause was that those two apps were simply not doing what they were intended to do. They were made by a security researcher, and even if they weren't developing any malicious activities or saving sensible data, because they violated Android's Terms of Service, Google decided to remove them. Till now, everything is OK.

But, what created notable flames on the blogs/forums/social networks was the information that Google, in order to remove completely that applications, also removed them (remotely) from the phones of some users who downloaded them. Personally, I don't see what is the problem in this, and why some people became...upset because of this. I think this reaction of Google was something normal.

Google affirmed that the two applications could be used in attacks, so, considering this, I really don't see any problem in Google's action. Are they afraid that if Google can do this, Google can even get access to their private data? So what, do they think that other OS providers didn't implement mechanisms like Google did? I'm sure that they also did. But at least, in Google's situation, it is very good that this is something transparent. Very good, Google!