Google takes apps off your phone June 26, 2010
Posted by David in : Technology , trackback
I am sure you have heard from a site or two or three Google flipped a magic switch and removed a couple apps that did nothing…sort of.
The apps in question were created and placed on the market by one Jon Oberheide from a security startup, Scio Security…yea I haven’t heard of either until all this either. Now Mr Oberheide found what he felt was a major security flaw in the Android OS. That flaw was the fact that you could install an app with one permission say something like the need permissions to download images from the upcoming twilight movie (one of the apps was called Twilight Eclipse Preview, and promised just that) but the only thing the app did was make it possible to download an update to the app without the end user knowing. Making it possible for this app to turn itself from a useless space waster to perhaps a key logger or whatever.
Now I have looked, and I can only find the Mr Oberheide told the world about this flaw after people have installed (and mostly uninstalled according to Google) his app, in fact he said this during a Summercon last week. I can find no evidence that he told before this and done the respectable thing of giving them a chance to fix it first. But after announcing it Google asked the creator to remove the apps from the market place which he did.
Now Google could have left it at this, they say most of the people who download the app had in fact removed it after finding it did nothing, but of course not everyone. Now Google could have handled this a few ways. They choose to use the kill switch that we have known about before the G1 was even released after all they have never used it before and I bet they really wanted to test it before it was really needed.
But of course some people are upset, and rightful so it looks like Google had abused the power we gave them, but that is only because it wasn’t that big of a deal. Next time Google uses the kill switch I am sure we will say thank you
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