Category: Other

Are Apple spying on iPhone users?

Are Apple spying on iPhone customers? This site claims to have proof that Apple secretly track iPhone usage and IEMI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide.

“Hidden in the code of the “Stocks” and “Weather” widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects.”

“This let[s] Apple know which app you are using when connecting with your iPhone. Obviously, they know the IP address you were using, the stocks companies you are interested [in], and so they can track down their customers all around the world. This also proves that there are probably other apps that do the same. Weather.app is also acting the same way.”

Of course, from a corporate perspective it is good to know a lot about your customers, but this seems to be a big no-no.

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U2 talk directly to fans on Facebook

I like the way U2 are talking directly to their fans via Facebook. All users that have listed the band as favourites on their Facebook profile got a video message from Bono yesterday. Bono wants to get feedback from fans on a sneak preview from the upcoming re-release of The Joshua Tree album. Bono sings and explains Wave of Sorrow, a previously unreleased song.

By the looks of the clip, even the rest of the band haven’t heard the current version of the song. The interview has a very spontaneous and genuine feel and it is a good example of how to build a hype around the release of an album with a minimal budget.

The video was posted late last night and has already attracted more than 2,000 comments on Facebook.

http://s.ilike.com/swfs/rssPlayer.swf

Update: TechCrunch has more details. “1.2 million fans have signed up specifically to get new U2 news and were notified as soon as the video went up two days ago. So far, over 2,000 fan messages have been left on the video.

This was an experiment, says a representative of the company. No press was notified when the video went live – they wanted to see how fast it spread virally and without any promotion.”

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62% of Facebook users are on MySpace

Read/Write Web has some interesting statistics from Rapleaf about Facebook users compared to users of five social networking sites on the OpenSocial platform. Turns out that 62% of Facebook users are on MySpace. Other intersting stats include:

– The greatest overlap between OpenSocial container sites exists between Myspace and Hi5, in which 43% of Hi5 users also use Myspace.

– Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male whereas the sites integrated with the OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male.

– 52% of Facebook users are 18-25, whereas 40% of the users are 18-25 for the five container sites on the OpenSocial platform.

– Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average whereas users of OpenSocial container sites tend to use 2.7 major social networking sites.

It was quite interesting to see that Facebook and Plaxo users are far more often also users of the other social networks listed in the research, than MySpace users. Although MySpace users on average are using 2.4 major social networking sites, they are not keen on using Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, Plaxo or Hi5 (see graph below).

Read the graph like this: the horizontal axis are users of the respective site, the graph shows how many percent of them are also using other social networks. 20% of Plaxo users are also on Facebook for example.

So does that mean that you can cover most Facebook users if you are on the OpenSocial platform? I don’t know, you would probably need to ask whether or not they are really active or just passive members.

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Social networks and integrity

The debate about integrity and social networks continues in Sweden, but surprisingly without much participation from Facebook. Maybe that’s why Facebook is looking to hire a Manager, Corporate Communications to:
– Protect and enhance the reputation of Facebook’s technologies and platform
– Educate users, analysts, journalists and bloggers about Facebook products and platform
– Drive positive coverage in the business and technology press

Helsingborgs Dagblad has digged deeper into the topic and reviewed the terms of use for a number of social networking sites, but without drawing any conclusions from the information. Read more in Swedish here.

Furthermore, ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, recently presented a paper called Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks. In the paper the agency lists a number of potential threats that may arise for users of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and suggests actions to address them:

• Recommendation 1.1 Encourage awareness-raising and educational campaigns
• Recommendation 1.2 Review and reinterpret the regulatory framework
• Recommendation 1.3 Increase transparency of data handling practices
• Recommendation 1.4 Discourage the banning of SNSs in schools
• Recommendation 1.5 Promote stronger authentication and access-control where
appropriate
• Recommendation 1.6 Implement countermeasures against corporate
espionage
• Recommendation 1.7 Maximise possibilities for abuse reporting and
detection
• Recommendation 1.8 Set appropriate defaults
• Recommendation 1.9 Providers should offer convenient means to delete data
completely
• Recommendation 1.10 Encourage the use of reputation techniques
• Recommendation 1.11 Build in automated filters
• Recommendation 1.12 Require consent from data subjects to include profile tags
in images
• Recommendation 1.13 Restrict spidering and bulk downloads
• Recommendation 1.14 Pay attention to search results
• Recommendation 1.15 for addressing SNS spam
• Recommendation 1.16 for addressing SNS Phishing
• Recommendation 1.17 Promote and research image-anonymisation techniques
and best practices
• Recommendation 1.18 Promote portable Social Networks
• Recommendation 1.19 on research into emerging trends in SNS
[Via Adam Erlandsson]

And while we are on the subject of Facebook, Anders Mildner, Sydsvenskan, earlier this week wrote an interesting piece about friends and “friends” on Facebook (in Swedish).

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