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![iPhone Games Caught Stealing Phone Numbers? [Legal]](http://images.dailyradar.com/media/uploads/tech/story_preview/2009/11/06/iphone_games_caught_stealing_phone_numbers_legal.jpg)
Blog Reactions
iLounge | All Things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond: News: iPhone developer accused of stealing phone numbers
EverythingiCafe: Makers of Zombies Live Accused of Stealing Players’ Phone Numbers
Reactions
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RT @boingboing iPhone game dev accused of stealing players' phone numbers - Boing Boing http://bit.ly/3gkB3B there goes another addiciton 8 days ago |
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Law Suit against Storm8, Vampires Live on iphone. Stealing information http://bit.ly/45J4ZY 8 days ago |
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RT @BlackHatEvents: RT @WeldPond: Backdoor in iPhone game steals players phone numbers. Expect more of this. http://bit.ly/13tRdg 10 days ago |
News: iPhone developer accused of stealing phone numbers
iLounge | All Things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond —
... ) has been filed against iPhone game developer Storm8 accusing the company of secretly transmitting and collecting players’ phone numbers. Storm8 makes a variety of games available for download from the App Store, including iMobsters, Vampires Live, and Zombies Live, which the company says have been downloaded more than 20 million times, making them “the number one role-playing games for the iPhone and iPod touch.” While the suit acknowledges that Storm8 admitted to transferring players’ phone numbers in August, calling the problem a “bug,” it also states that the company ...
Makers of Zombies Live Accused of Stealing Players’ Phone Numbers
EverythingiCafe —
... games are said to use their software to illegally and automatically gather the numbers of anyone downloads one of their games. BoingBoing is hosting the full text of the lawsuit for any of you legal minded folks. However, given that all of their games are identical shovelware supported by microtransactions, with just slightly different skins, we’re leaning to this being a big old dirty scam, regardless of how many times Storm8 calls it a scam.
[via BoingBoing]
links for 2009-11-05
Jarrett House North —
... iPhone game dev accused of stealing players' phone numbers – Boing Boing
Best comment: "Apple doesn't look at the source code, they only have access to the binaries. It can be extremely tricky to guess what a program does based on the binaries." ...
iPhone Games Caught Stealing Phone Numbers? [Legal]
Kotaku —
... the company, who are behind iPhone games like World War, iMobsters and Vampires Live, "has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game". Apparently this number-farming went unannounced until August, when Storm8 finally fessed up, saying it was a"bug". Michael Turner, the man filing the suit, says "poppycock" to that, and is after damages. iPhone game dev accused of stealing players' phone numbers [boing boing] Send an email to the ...
Another iPhone Developer Gets Busted Stealing Phone Numbers [IPhone Apps]
Gizmodo —
... got busted gathering numbers and then calling people to harass them to buy more apps, which is certainly a more brazen move. Storm8 claims that this was a bug, but they're getting sued anyways. It doesn't pay to be shady, devs! [Boing Boing via ...
iPhone developers still stealing phone numbers
9 to 5 Mac - Apple Intelligence —
... If you have any of the iPhone games above, iPhone developer Storm 8 might have collected your iPhone number according to a lawsuit investigated by Boing Boing. ...
iPhone App Developer Sued For Stealing Users' Phone Numbers [Storm8]
Consumerist —
For secretly stealing users' phone number by exploiting a backdoor iPhone vulnerability, app developer Storm8 got slapped with a class action lawsuit. The maker of games like Vampires Live and iMobsters, many of which are top downloads for the device, probably because each game says that you can get extra points in it if you download one of their other games, has not returned requests for comment. Lawsuit text (PDF) iPhone game dev accused of stealing players' phone numbers [BoingBoing] (Photo: Cаvin 〄)
iPhone game developer sued for farming phone numbers
IntoMobile - Cell Phone News, Information, and Analysis —
... don’t fit into the company’s narrow view of acceptable content, but it seems they still need to work on the basics – like rejecting potential spyware.
Should Apple be held accountable for letting an iPhone app embedded with “malicious software code” onto the AppStore? Should Apple pull the app on grounds that it’s collecting iPhone users’ phone numbers? We’d like to hear what you think in the comments below.
[Via: boingboing]
Related News from IntoMobile:
Apple sued again ...
iPhone dev accused of harvesting player phone numbers
Joystiq —
... As if, in this world of economic hardship and international strife, you need another thing to worry about. iPhone developer Storm8 has been accused of stealing the phone numbers of players that downloaded its apps like Vampires Live and Zombies Live in a ...
iPhone Dev Faces Lawsuit Over Number Farming
Edge Online - Interactive Entertainment Today —
... Seeking injunctive relief and damages, the data harvesting suit alleges that the iMobsters and Vampires Live studio exploited an "electronic backdoor" to learn players’ numbers, reports Boing Boing. ...
Lawsuit claims iPhone games stole phone numbers
Macworld —
... that Studio8’s apps generate when they pass your phone number back to the company’s servers. For its part, Studio8 disavows any nefariousness; BoingBoing reports that the developers described the phone number gathering as a “bug.” Which I guess is like when I accidentally stole a package of Pop Rocks from the candy store. Every single day for a year, until I got caught.
'Ravensword' and Many Other Unity-Powered Games Rejected by Apple
Touch Arcade —
... Storm8, developers of iMobsters and Vampires Live were recently accused of harvesting players phone numbers using private API's and uploading them to their servers– A gross violation of the iPhone developer SDK agreement. The Unity engine currently uses the two private API calls that Storm8 allegedly exploited to steal user data, _NSGetEnviron and exc_server. Mantas Puida of Unity Technologies explains these two API's utilized by the Unity engine serve the following functions: ...
iPhone Game Maker Apologizes for Stealing Phone Numbers, Calls Lawsuit "Meritless"
ReadWriteWeb —
... While initially Storm8 claimed the harvesting of these phone numbers was due to a "bug" in their code, attorneys for the plaintiff were quick to point out that specific software code was required in order to retrieve the numbers - no bug could have done that. In other words, the collection was intentional. ...
Ravensword, Other Unity-based Games Rejected by Apple
Apple Forums & iPhone Forums, Mods, Hacks, News, Themes, Downloads, and more! | ModMyi.com - 4,711,751,911 —
... Storm8, the company behind multiplayer games like iMobsters and Vampires Live, has been sued for using private, unpublished API calls to harvest game users' phone numbers and uploaded them to its servers. The suit alleges: ...
Ravensword and Other Unity Apps Rejected
Mac|Life all RSS Feed —
... that the eagerly awaited RPG Ravensword has been rejected by App Store reviewers, along with several other applications written with the Unity
engine. The engine includes API calls which, according
to one lawsuit, were used by Storm8 to steal phone numbers of people
playing the game and upload them wirelessly. ...
