Droid Incredible Secretly Tracks Surfing Habits?

[kyeana]

[citation][nom]Jonnydough[/nom]This really doesn't surprise me. Chrome/Android is Google's first attempt at operating systems. People on the same plan using different phones and different numbers have had people they never called dialed up somehow. There are definitely some weird things happening on Droid phones that don't seem to have been realized or addressed. And every company tries to track people these days. Information is free money, all you have to do is record and sell it.[/citation]

Read and understand article before posting. This is a problem with sense ui, an add on to android that HTC makes. The operating system released by Google (stick andtoid) doesn't have this problem

 

[jsc]

That's not a bug; it's a feature.

 

[littlec]

uhg, nubs it's not a GOOGLE IS TEH EVIL111!!! problem it's bad or stupid code on HTCs part. If you have taken control of root on your phone this isn't a big problem.

 

[brianmoz]

[citation][nom]etichi[/nom]I ask kyeanna this:If apple was doing this would your response be the same?[/citation]
if apple was doing this we would be reading comments linking jobs to stalin

 

[guanyu210379]

Gathering your datas is what google always does.
Even taking fotos for the so called google streetview ist just bullshit!
What they doing really is taking your WLAN datas....
But on the other hand...I think that microsoft is doing the same...

 

[Clintonio]

Kevin, instead of posting proApple, now you've decided to scaremonger against Andriod/HTC? How much does Apple pay you? Or, more realistically, how much do you WANT them to pay you?

Also, a few snapshots of my browsing habits + if someone hacks my Phones filesystem/ steals my phone? I can think of MUCH worse problems with ANY phone if that happens. (Filesystem access = history, friends, pictures, contacts, videos. Stolen phone = filesystem access + uh oh)

 

[serra]

Taking random screen shots of the browser isn't tracking your surfing habits. There is a big difference between making a list of where I surf over taking a few screen shots.

Screen shots don't capture passwords, it is even unlikely they would capture user names.

A bug that will be fixed, nothing more. Plus has Clintonio pointed out, they need to have access to my phone to see the screen shots, which, oddly, contains much more info about my surfing habits than some random screen shots.

 

[NapoleonDK]

I think it also needs to be said that this only applies to the built-in browser on the HTC SenseUI devices. Who in their right mind uses that? Use Dolphin or Opera or any one of the many others.

Also, thanks for reminding me TOM's, I had forgotten to clean out my SD card since my last factory reset (right after 2.1 came out for Eris) There was a crapload of little backup files in there that had been dropped by all the apps I used to have. Messy!

 

[shanky887614]

anyway, if its on the sd card and you cant delete it, why not just reformat it in pc?

if it wont work in phone after that it should ask you to format it or something

 

[serra]

I verified that the image do exist on my Incredible. It appears they are random screen shots, judging from the shots, it appears to be some sort of aid for the program to see how Sense is being used. Some zooms, some full screens. After ~2 months a total of 74 shots. Really didn't say much about my surfing habits, though I could identify the sites fairly easily.

To delete the images, I connected my Incredible to my PC via USB and selected "Disk Drive". I was then able to see and delete the images in the .bookmark_thumb1 folder without any issue. Finding and deleting the images took all of 20 seconds.

They are only stored in the internal memory, not on the SD card, so directly connecting to the PC is the only way to easily delete them.

This is a non-issue. 74 images after all this time is fairly random and seldom.

 

[Guest]

Arizona, I kinda like this "Undisclosed feature" since I was planning on buying this phone for the kids, it would work kinda like a cyber nany, allowing us the parent to see what the kids are looking at these days.

 

[Guest]

I sometimes charge my phone at work by connecting my Eris to my computer via a USB cable. Today i downloaded "all video and image" to my home computer using a USB cable to clear out my photo album... i couldn't believe that half of the images on my SD card were actually screen shots....

INCLUDING screen shots of my WORK COMPUTER while my phone was charging! That's kind of a big deal.. i'm in the financial services industry and work with very very sensitive client and firm information. if my phone fell into the wrong hands before i became aware of this issue, wow... freaks me out.

not gonna lie... not happy about this "glitch"