Tag Archives: Smartphone
California’s kill-switch law goes in to effect today
Sometimes I just can’t figure out why an obviously great – and necessary – idea doesn’t immediately become a law, even if it adds a miniscule extra step on the manufacturing end.
In this case, I’m referring to a “kill-switch,” a feature that would allow the owner of a smartphone to remotely render the device unusable in the case of loss or theft. Today in California, a law goes into effect statewide that mandates all smartphones have kill-switch functionality implemented and on by default (something I suspect will not be the case universally). Minnesota is the only other state with a mandatory kill-switch law, however their version does not require the feature to be enabled by default.
What smartphone apps really want
It’s no secret that when you install an app on your smartphone, it asks you for certain permissions. Well, perhaps ‘asks’ is the wrong term – it tells you what it will do, and if you don’t like it you can just not use the app, there’s no real choice involved. The problem is, many of us install apps without checking what the app will be doing at all, a holdover from our approach to privacy policies.
Source: Welivesecurity.com
Some permissions seem nefarious but really aren’t. For example, if an app says it needs to ‘monitor your phone state,’ that would be understandably concerning, however all that means is that the app needs to be able to determine is you’re receiving a call and hand control back to the phone so the phone can tell you there’s a call coming in and allow you to answer.
