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Is your cell phone or mobile device being secured and is your personal privacy being protected?

We've authored a whitepaper and comprised a list of videos and articles to help show you what your mobile device can expose, how target marketers or attackers might exploit those vulnerabilities and how you can start to take back control of your privacy.

Off-Grid Apps™ Common Privacy and Security Vulnerabilities of Mobile Devices Whitepaper

Download Last Updated: October 2021

Videos

 
 

Articles

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APE asks:  Ever hear of the Third-party Doctrine?

It's a United States legal doctrine where in 1979, the Supreme Court in Smith v. Maryland solidified what is now known as the “third-party doctrine” by holding that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” So, people who voluntarily give information to third parties, such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs) and e-mail servers, have "no legitimate expectation of privacy" and this lack of privacy protection allows the United States government to obtain information from third parties without a legal warrant and without otherwise complying with the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search and seizure without probable cause and a judicial search warrant. Simply put, in the eyes of the law the Fourth Amendment is not violated when the government seizes information voluntarily conveyed or revealed to a third party without a warrant.


That's just bananas, protect your privacy!

Last updated: October 2021

The results of a recent study reveal that in some countries up to 90% of these websites add third-party tracker cookies without users' consent. This occurs even in countries with strict user privacy laws.


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Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), a military-intelligence unit of the U.S. government, buys huge amounts of commercially available smartphone data and uses it to spy on Americans and track their movement history.


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The FBI is issuing this announcement to raise awareness of malicious Quick Response (QR) codes. Cybercriminals are tampering with QR codes to redirect victims to malicious sites that steal login and financial information.


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More than two million mobile malware samples were detected in the wild last year, with threats impacting over 10 million devices globally, according to new data from Zimperium.


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Three states and the District of Columbia allege that the tech giant misled consumers by continuing to track those who had changed their privacy settings to prevent data collection.


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Texas, Indiana, Washington state and the District of Columbia sued Alphabet’s Google over what they called deceptive location tracking practices that invade users’ privacy.


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A smartphone app that’s expected to be widely used by athletes and others attending next month’s Winter Games in Beijing has glaring security problems that could expose sensitive data to interception.


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Experts predict that in the not-too-distant future, your internet habits could affect your credit score and help lenders determine what they offer you.


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Tweet comes after Musk denied a report that he would be visiting Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory.


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Apple’s App Tracking Transparency that was rolled out with iOS 14.5 appears to have made no difference in the total number of active third-party trackers, and didn’t affect third-party tracking connection attempts either.


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The Washington Post published an investigative report in which it gets a hacker to figure out just what kind of information OnStar and a randomly selected 2017 model car's internal computers are collecting—in this case, a 2017 Chevrolet Volt.


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Hours after Apple filed a lawsuit against Israeli spyware maker NSO Group, it sent threat notification alerts to notify victims of state-sponsored hackers that they had been targets, including activists and researchers in Thailand, El Salvador and Uganda..


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Is Facebook listening to everything you say via your smartphone microphone? It's an age-old question, but you may still be curious as to whether the social network can hear your conversations.


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The Pentagon may be using commercial data to track Americans without due legal process, according to a letter from Senator Ron Wyden shared with Vice News.


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Front-line journalists are high-value targets, and their enemies will spare no expense to silence them. Unfortunately, journalists can be betrayed by their own tools. Their smartphones are also the perfect tracking device.


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Governments and powerful political institutions are actively exploiting the unwitting emissions of phones, leaving journalists, activists, and rights workers in a new position of constant vulnerability.


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Even just a decade ago the idea that individuals’ voices could be used to identify and draw inferences about them as they shopped or interacted with retailers seemed like something out of a science fiction novel. Yet a new business sector is emerging to do exactly that.


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Hundreds of third-party apps in Android devices were given access to sensitive data logged by contact-tracing apps built on Google and Apple's API, according to security researchers.


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The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) will ban media-related mobile applications from sending notifications from independent social media accounts operating in violation of regulations, and will filter what it sees as harmful and undesirable information.


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The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said the programs collected data without consent, more information was collected than needed for operational purposes and that data was not deleted or revised in accordance with regulations.


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The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said the programs collected data without consent, more information was collected than needed for operational purposes and that data was not deleted or revised in accordance with regulations.


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What’s often lost in the mix during these debates is that there’s a good chance your cell phone carrier, unbeknownst to you, is sharing some of your data with third parties.


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China is covertly conducting surveillance and even tracking people’s movements in North America using what’s called “a social credit system,” trying to advance its totalitarian authority all over the world even in free nations.


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Every cell phone perpetually generates a specific record of its owner’s location. It then shares that information with a third party. Taken together, and combined with other data available on commercial markets, cell phone records can be used to find soldiers...


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The Department of Homeland Security has used the information to detect undocumented immigrants and others who may be entering the U.S. unlawfully, according to these people and documents.


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Recently disclosed data concerning one Apple platform attack proves how sophisticated hackers are becoming. You must harden device security.


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The ultrasonic tracking method relies on inaudible signals embedded in TV commercials or other ads that can then be picked up by code in an app on a user’s phone, tablet, or other device. The idea is to match users with their devices and ensure that the advertisers’ messages are finding them, wherever they are.


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Public health experts say that collecting personal data may be the only way to analyze information on the massive scale needed. But how that information is used and by whom worries some privacy advocates.


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Many of our daily activities — from riding the bus to accessing our bank accounts — are done online. The question arises, “who is keeping track of all that data?” What does Google know about you? Is Facebook transparent about how it handles your data? Is Huawei spying on us?


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In North Carolina, police are able to track your historical cellphone locations without a warrant, but a new bill would give officers greater oversight over where you are.


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In 2016, a U.S. defense contractor named PlanetRisk Inc. was working on a software prototype when its employees discovered they could track U.S. military operations through the data generated by the apps on the mobile phones of American soldiers.


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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has had a significant win against Google. The Federal Court found Google misled some Android users about how to disable personal location tracking.


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If you haven’t already, you’ll see a surprising message pop up on your iPhone from Facebook in the next few weeks: Do you give it permission to track you? To make your iPhone more private, tap “Ask App not to Track.” Do not tap “Allow,” unless you love creepy online ads.


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You pull out your phone, and you see an ad for AirPods. Wait a minute, you think. Didn’t I just have a conversation about AirPods with my friend? Like, a real conversation, spoken aloud? Is my phone listening to me?


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In a bid to protect students from pornography, predators and other online dangers, some schools are turning to technology that notifies teachers, parents and welfare staff when students access concerning material on their mobile phones.


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There’s an app for that…but should you use it? Some of the most popular apps you love and have come to rely on could be posing more of a danger than they're worth. Here's what you need to know.


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The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporters looked at some 80 iOS apps, all recommended in the App Store as being "Apps We Love." What they found was all bar one were using third-party trackers to collect data about the user.


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Perhaps you’ve been talking to a friend about an island vacation, when suddenly deals for the Maldives or Hawaii pop up on your Facebook feed. Creepy or coincidence? Was your smartphone eavesdropping on your conversation?


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Some academics at Northeastern University recently set out to look into one such long-held assumption, the zombie conspiracy which no one ever seems to be able to kill over whether our phones are secretly listening to us to know which ads to present to us.


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...you're certainly familiar with that pop-up box that requests permission to use your device's microphone or camera. But there can be a more sinister side to these permissions: Some apps don't bother asking for your consent at all, turning your device into a pocket spy, loaded with cameras and microphones at the ready.


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The federal law enforcement agency’s records show a growing focus on harnessing the latest private sector tools for mass surveillance, including recent contracts with companies that monitor social media posts and collect cellphone location data.


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The letter which noted the beginning of the investigation also noted that the majority of United States citizens use mobile phones that have apps capable of gathering accurate location information 24/7. This feature leads to major concerns about privacy and security.


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The Internal Revenue Service attempted to identify and track potential criminal suspects by purchasing access to a commercial database that records the locations of millions of American cellphones.


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Open-source web browser Brave has at least two famous fans. Podcast host Joe Rogan and musician Reggie Watts this week revealed that they prefer the privacy-focused browser to avoid tracking and ads.


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