Flashlight App is Spying on everyone who installs it! Cyber security report here!

[TheNutcracker]

[TheNutcracker]

1. Kick!!! This should be on every front page of the nooze!

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. This originated in October 2014...

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/flashlight.asp

snip-

It is true that one flashlight app developer, Goldenshores Technologies (makers of the "Brightest Flashlight" app for Android), settled a complaint with the FTC in 2014 over their collecting location data and unique device IDs from users' devices and sharing that data with advertisers. And it is indeed the case that a number of flashlight apps can and do request access to permissions and data on users' cell phones that seemingly has nothing to do with the ordinary functioning of the app.

However, another factor not mentioned in the "threat assessment report" was whether flashlight apps are more prone to requesting access to unneeded permissions and data than any other category of app. As Wired noted, many other types of apps "want access to information they probably shouldn't," and the fact that a given app has access to data doesn't necessarily mean the app is actually using that data for nefarious purposes:

-snip

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Your fleshlight is spying on you!

Imagine the view. It's nuts!

[dilby]

5. I see what you did there. n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Lucky You!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew

[RKP5637]

15. LOL!!! That fleshlight is a flasher!

[dilby]

4. Maybe he would be believable if he gave examples of Apps that were doing this.

Him just going out and saying Flashlight Apps are malware because they request the same access to shit 99% of your other apps asked for is misleading. Hopefully not to many people ran out and factory reset their phones because of the flashlight app they installed.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. I'm wondering why this video is made to look like a cable news report

but I don't see an actual channel, do you?

[dilby]

10. Well it's Fox so it's technically just made up fearmongering bullshit anyways

and not real news.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Yeah, I thought it looked like Fox, but I didn't see the logo.

The fact that the guy doing most of the talking runs a company that has a financial interest in "protecting" people from this stuff is a dead giveaway, though.

[Egnever]

6. WTF? FOX?

We get our news from fox now? Fuck a bunch of that.

This app may have collected data that was not necessary to it's functioning but I will be damned if I am going to take fox's word for anything.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. It looks like Fox, doesn't it.

That same over the top hyperbolic style.

[zappaman]

12. I guess the poster got bored kicking their "Clinton is a pedophile" thread.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. "if it wasn't for hyperbole, I wouldn't have any bole at all!"

[Egnever]

14. It is fox

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/index.html

I recognized that ratfuck host immediately

[Rex]

13. Look who found a way to make a shinny penny!

Is he the news stations Cybersecurity Expert? So NOW someone worries about the evil Oligarchy? NOT because of decades of grand theft from the Treasury!? Jeezus...where is the application for his job? I need a better one!

[MineralMan]

17. Damn! Now my $500 iPhone is

Completely useless to me. I was using it to find my way to the toilet with that app, and now I discover that it's spying on my junk. Crap! Now I'll have dig the $3 LED flashlight out of the garbage...