News
iPhone developer accused of stealing phone numbers
By Charles Starrett
Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Thursday, November 5, 2009
News Category: Apps + Games
A class action lawsuit (PDF Link) has been filed against iPhone game developer Storm8 accusing the company of secretly transmitting and collecting players’ phone numbers. Storm8 makes a variety of games available for download from the App Store, including iMobsters, Vampires Live, and Zombies Live, which the company says have been downloaded more than 20 million times, making them “the number one role-playing games for the iPhone and iPod touch.” While the suit acknowledges that Storm8 admitted to transferring players’ phone numbers in August, calling the problem a “bug,” it also states that the company “could not have accidentally harvested its users’ phone numbers” and needed to use “very specific and specialized software code to do so.” This is not the first time a company has been accused of secretly stealing users’ phone numbers via an application; European application mogoRoad was said to be transferring users’ numbers and using them to place the unsolicited calls in September.
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1
I would like to know more about this. I was using the app till today. Are we talking all number from a phone or just the number belonging to the phone SIM? Also if they are making calls are we talking “calls make to the phone? Or calls made using the number causing financial loss? Should I be getting my number changed. Would be nice if an article of a serious nature like this was more clear.
Cheers,.
Posted by EkDor on November 7, 2009 at 9:51 PM (PDT)
2
Apple may want to consider doing like Android does and inform the user of what each application has access/permission to do on the phone. With this transparency in place rogue applications would lose their cloak of secrecy.
Posted by andy on November 8, 2009 at 8:27 PM (PDT)