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February 29th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
A report published by the London Sunday Times has revealed that
Facebook has been accessing and reading the personal text messages of
users of their social networking app. ~ Madison Ruppert
Unfortunately the report itself is locked behind a pay wall, but the report has been partially summarized by Fox News (let’s just hope it’s more accurate than most of their reporting).
Facebook has reportedly even admitted reading the text messages,
claiming that they were accessing data without the knowledge of users as
part of a trial in an effort to launch their own messaging service.
This is just another piece of evidence which supports statements made
by individuals like Julian Assange of WikiLeaks who said in an interview with RT, “Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”
It appears that Facebook is not alone, although my readers who have been keeping up on my coverage of Big Brother technology likely assume as much.
Some of the other culprits mentioned in Fox’s summary are Flickr,
which is now under the Yahoo! Umbrella, as well as Yahoo! Messenger
itself.
The Sunday Times also reported that dating site Badoo has accessed
the private data of smartphone users while also reporting that some apps
allow companies to delve much deeper into the private lives of users.
Some apps apparently can even allow companies to intercept phone
calls, although that isn’t all that surprising given that it is
essentially what Google is allowing themselves to do with their new
privacy policy which is not only impossible to opt-out of but also steps up their Big Brother practices to new heights.
Of course this is just yet another way the massive and accelerating data collection arms race amongst Silicon Valley giants manifests itself in our lives.
The newspaper’s investigation found that some apps are even capable
of hijacking users’ devices in ways which are much more troubling than
just the reading of text messages.
This includes YouTube which is apparently able to remotely access and
operate smartphone cameras, even the controls of such cameras allowing
for photographs or videos to be taken at any time.
It is unclear if the YouTube app automatically loaded on to all Apple
iPhones has this capability as well. This would be even more troubling
because it is actually impossible to remove and newer versions of the
iPhone are outfitted with dual cameras, making for a top-notch covert
surveillance device.
The publicly available information on this investigation does not
stipulate if it was restricted to one operating system, although one can
assume that it focused on the Android operating system.
This is because one app was singled out called the Tennis Juggling Game (only available in the Android Market) which is produced by a smaller company yet is still capable of intercepting the phone calls of users.
Another app singled out for its ability to intercept phone calls was
My Remote Lock, a security app made by another small company called
eAgency Mobile Security which is also only available on the Android Market.
For some, it might be easy to dismiss the dangers of large
corporations harvesting highly sensitive private user data since they
are “reputable” and according to some, trustworthy.
Yet, when it comes to unknown companies collecting the information
and doing whatever they please with it, I doubt as many people would be
as quick to accept it.
Emma Draper from the Privacy International campaign organization was
quoted as saying, “Your personal information is a precious commodity,
and companies will go to great lengths to get their hands on as much of
it as possible.”
Indeed, this couldn’t be more accurate and is precisely why I discount the statements made by Google and other industry giants
recently which claim that they will introduce a “do-not-track” privacy
button allowing users to block their personal information from being
harvested when using the Google Chrome browser.
This would put the entire business model upon which Google is built
in danger and a company that big would never choose to put their revenue
source at risk of being completely eradicated.
While the over 500,000 apps in Apple’s App Store are covered by the
same terms and conditions, the Android Market works a bit differently.
As you can see on the pages linked above, there is a tab labeled
“permissions” which lists what the given application has access to on
your phone.
To be fair, Google is pretty transparent about the capabilities of
applications in this regard, with the My Remote Lock app’s permissions
page saying, “Malicious applications may read your confidential
messages” and “Malicious applications may monitor, redirect, or prevent
outgoing calls” amongst other warnings which most users likely ignore
completely or never read to begin with.
This was confirmed by a YouGov poll for the newspaper which found
that a whopping 70 percent of smartphone users rarely or never read the
terms and conditions policy of an app when downloading it to their
device.
This has become a chronic problem in the digital world, with massive
and sometimes difficult to find and understand fine print accompanying
many services and devices.
Due to the sheer size of these texts and the “legalese” often
utilized therein, it makes complete sense that most consumers would
never bother with them.
However, that lapse allows for things like this to happen and the
apathy of users seems to reinforce the drive for companies to collect as
much personal information as humanly possible, even if it is done in
deceptive or secretive ways.
This is also allowed – if not encouraged – by governments because it
serves as an invaluable intelligence collection asset. People actually
choose to carry around a surveillance device with them at all times and
most corporations are happy to fill any user information requests from
government agencies without protest.
Yet thankfully here in the United States there are a few of our so-called representatives who are standing up against these invasions of privacy and highly invasive software like Carrier IQ.
Unfortunately the support is not nearly as widespread as it should be
and unless consumers start actually paying attention and taking control
of their personal information, there is nothing stopping companies for
continuing or even expanding these practices.
Madison Ruppert – February 26, 2012 – EndTheLie
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