Name: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Reportedly 'Snooping' on Pasteboard Data
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Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Reportedly 'Snooping' on Pasteboard Data

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Sunday March 15, 2020 7:19 am PDT by According to new research by , dozens of popular iOS apps are reading the contents of the pasteboard without user consent, which could include sensitive information.The investigation discovered that many popular apps, such as TikTok, 8 Ball Pool™,&nbsp;and Hotels.com, quietly read any text found in the pasteboard every time the app is opened.iOS and iPadOS apps have unrestricted access to the system-wide pasteboard, also known as the clipboard, as of iOS 13.3.Text left in the pasteboard may be inconsequential, but it could also be highly sensitive data such as passwords or financial information.&nbsp;The potential security risks of this vulnerability have by Bakry and Mysk, where they found that precise location information was leaking through the system pasteboard.A diverse range of apps, from popular games and social networking apps, to news apps of major news organizations such as Fox News or The Wall Street Journal, were examined using standard Apple development tools.&nbsp;Many of these apps do not provide any UI that manages text, yet they read the text content of the pasteboard every time they are opened.It is also of note that if Universal Clipboard is enabled, an app may also access whatever has been copied on a Mac.What exactly these apps do with the contents of the pasteboard once they have read it is unknown.Tag: [ ]I assume we'll get an additional permissions dialog to cover this soon.It can be useful: in many instances, apps will read the pasteboard to determine if a URL or other information (like numbers related to their services) were copied from the browser so the app can shortcut a response to that data. One of my favorite instances is Deliveries: If you have a copied tracking number or link, it'll ask and can automatically start the adding process for you.But I also get how allowing anyone to freely read it can be a major issue.Score: 23 Votes ( | )Apple should just have a policy that any action like this, which takes customer data in a way which is not part of the core experience and not intuitive to the user based on the nature of the app will result in an immediate and lifetime ban.all this crap would stop. Otherwise, if it’s just rule after rule, but in a culture of stealing personal data, Apple will never catch up.. App publishers will think of ways around the rules or do something not covered yet by a rule—like stealing clipboard info. Just make it a death sentence for your business if you steal customer data will result in a lifetime ban. Then it will stop—at least from the big companies.It’s like the government Rico statues. Very broad but allows any type of organized crime to be prosecuted.ive deleted every app I don’t absolutely need on my phone. I now don’t download apps just to play with for awhile because I don’t know what tricks they play with my data and how they track me. And no, a privacy policy which no human reads doesn’t solve the problem.And I don’t want tons of security dialogs and privacy settings which take time and constant surveillance to monitor. It’s facebook’s dirty trick, and iOS privacy settings are becoming equally cumbersome.As more and more apps become spyware in ways consumers cannot imagine, it will kill the core of the app economy.Score: 20 Votes ( | )I do not trust a single app nowadays. Especially on iOS, iPadOS, watchOS. (As opposed to macOS. Android apps are at another level of badness.)Why?Most companies are too cheap to hire the skills to develop their app from scratch. So they outsource the development to 3rd parties who use code from all over the place without even knowing what it does. So even if the company putting the app out doesn’t have malicious intent, in reality they themselves have no idea what the app really does beneath the hood.Look at apps from even reputable companies like AT&amp;T and Comcast and they are so buggy and have such a poor, unfriendly UI, you know they are orphan projects within the company with tiny budgets and little oversight.Kind of like Apple “discovering” that one of its suppliers is using child labor, because they have no idea what is really going on at their outsourced partners.Score: 17 Votes ( | )I would like to see an option in the iOS settings to clear the pasteboard on a regular basis. If I copy something in one app and paste it in another app I don’t need that content anymore, so have it being cleared for example every 30 seconds would be no problem for me.Score: 16 Votes ( | )I would welcome a system-wide default to restrict all reading of the copy/paste buffer to be purely manually-instigated by the user, always. I have often thought this was a potential issue and behaved accordingly, but I don’t think it’s something the average user should have to worry about, the default should be to block reading it unless given specific, informed permission.Score: 9 Votes ( | )That is why I try to use as much Apple apps as possible. And everything else done within the browser.Score: 9 Votes ( | )Sunday September 11, 2022 7:53 am PDT by Apple is set to release iOS 16 this Monday, September 12, as a free update for the iPhone 8 and newer. iOS 16 includes plenty of new features, ranging from a customizable Lock Screen to the ability to temporarily edit or unsend iMessages. To install iOS 16 when the update is released, open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap General → Software Update. After you update your iPhone to... • Monday September 12, 2022 4:27 am PDT by The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus have seen "bad" pre-order results, indicating that Apple's positioning of the two new standard models may have failed, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. In his -14-first-weekend-online-pre-order-survey-110411040b5d"&gt;latest post on Medium, Kuo explained that the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max have seen "neutral" and "good" pre-order results... • Sunday September 11, 2022 2:00 am PDT by There are usually multiple features that Apple is not able to finish before the first official release of a major new version of iOS, and this year looks to be no different, with a total of nine iOS 16 features now confirmed to not be present in the first public version of the new OS. Last year, SharePlay, Digital IDs in the Wallet app, and Universal Control were among a large number of... • Sunday September 11, 2022 3:58 pm PDT by Apple does not advertise battery capacities for its new iPhone 14 lineup, but MacRumors has obtained this information from a Chinese regulatory database. Three out of four iPhone 14 models feature larger battery capacities compared to the iPhone 13 lineup, with the exception being the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which is equipped with a slightly smaller battery compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max.... • Tuesday September 13, 2022 1:00 am PDT by Following iOS 16's public release, Apple has confirmed that users of older generation iPhone models will miss out on the ability to show their iPhone's battery percentage directly in the status bar. In an updated support document, Apple says that the new battery percentage display is not available on the iPhone XR, iPhone 11, the iPhone 12 mini, and the iPhone 13 mini. Apple provides no... • When will iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 be released? Here's everything we know. Apple on July 20 released iOS 15.6 and iPadOS 15.6, bringing improvements to the live sports experience in the TV app and several bug fixes. How big of an upgrade are Apple's cheapest mainstream flagship phones? Apple's latest Pro phones replace the notch with an innovative "Dynamic Island," but what else is new compared to last year's models?• • • • • September 16Apple's new high-end iPhone models with Dynamic Island camera cutout, A16 chip, 48MP main camera, and more. Pre-orders available now. September 16Apple's latest mainstream iPhone models in two sizes with A15 chip, car crash detection, satellite connectivity, and more. Pre-order now ahead of iPhone 14 launch on September 16, iPhone 14 Plus on October 7. September 16New body temperature sensors, car crash detection, and more. Pre-order now. Mid–Late 2022?Updated AirPods Pro could see some design changes like elimination of the stem.• • • • • {other_blurb}

Sunday March 15, 2020 7:19 am PDT by According to new research by , dozens of popular iOS apps are reading the contents of the pasteboard without user consent, which could include sensitive information.The investigation discovered that many popular apps, such as TikTok, 8 Ball Pool™,&nbsp;and Hotels.com, quietly read any text found in the pasteboard every time the app is opened.iOS and iPadOS apps have unrestricted access to the system-wide pasteboard, also known as the clipboard, as of iOS 13.3.Text left in the pasteboard may be inconsequential, but it could also be highly sensitive data...

Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Reportedly 'Snooping' on Pasteboard Data

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