Your phone could send info if it was connected via wifi or even if connected to itunes.
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Leaked: Apple Stealing All FaceTime Information, AT&T Locks Users via OTA Updates
- Thread starter The Catalyst
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i guess the difference would be that you rent your cable/satellite box from the company where as the iPhone is your property that you have purchased and should have all rights to.
Except most likely you took $400 of asking price by signing a contract that enforces just this.
Regardless, I'm not sure if this is as big an issue as "Alpha's" and this poster's wording makes it seem. You can tell by his sometimes subtle use of hyperbole that he is clearly an expert at the english language, and from what I can tell he uses it to instill a subconscious sense of overbearing authority and powerlessness. Lots of companies collect information like this, Google collects your IP address and location, if possible, every time you visit a page on google.com. A lot of the time the information is completely anonymous, like it is with Google, and there is no legal way to trace it back to the original person. I could understand why apple might want to collect information about how many people are using FaceTime, and at what demographics, locations, et cetera. Our "Alpha" never said whether the data is anonymous or not, although his wording seemed to suggest 'not.' Even so it comes down to how the use the information. I don't imagine they would ever share or sell the information, and I hardly imagine they would even care about it, on the person-to-person level. They would probably keep it locked up in their servers labled "Company Secrets" or whatever, so that they could then use the general information in advertisements, or as "material evidence" when pitching to companies like Cisco to implant FaceTime capabilities in their own products.
About the OTA carrier updates, these are, of course, confirmed by our first commenter. In the past Carrier Updates have done, well, nothing. It's possible that these carrier updates may, or may not, be more detrimental to Jailbreakers and unlockers, but unfortunately, you signed a contract to AT&T when you bought your phones, and saved $400 for doing so, that gives them the right to do this (read it if you don't believe me, some of it is shocking). If you bought your iPhone unlocked from Apple they are obviously not going to push mandatory carrier settings updates from AT&T, especially if you are not using AT&T. For those of you who really care, expert iPhone programmers like GeoHot or the Dev Team should have no trouble firewalling the incoming Carrier Updates, should they prove to be detrimental. If Apple and AT&T can't contact the phone, they can't lock it.
As for the jailbreak support for AppleCare customers, I am not well enough informed to tell you otherwise. In the Apple EULA that you agree to before using your iPhone, it states that any sort of unauthorized modifications, hardware or otherwise void iPhone warranty, and under the warranty section it says that only warrantable or warranteed products are eligible for AppleCare customer support, which includes Genius Bars and telephone support. If you do a fresh restore of the iPhone Apple cannot tell if you have jailbroken it or not, so you can still get your warranty. As for the other times, just don't call Apple if you don't want your phone blacklisted. The only thing that concerns me here is the blacklisting part. It seems that legally Apple has the right to refuse service to you if you jailbreak your phone, but their jurisdiction should stop there, if you ask me. I'm not sure what hidden clause of the National Vetrans Day Proclamation allows them the right to brick a phone that the user payed for, even if under contract. I guess we'll see how it all plays out, I just don't think it is going to be as big a deal as it's been made out to be.
-macgeek112
could be true
this is true..I called Apple support and they knew I wasn't using the latest software....if anything this is just Apple and AT&T using each other for both company's personal agendas....I'm sure AT&T wants to prevent Jailbreakers from unlimited tethering and Apple wants to prevent unlocking...iOS4 has given both Apple and AT&T more access to your iPhone than ever...the data nazi's are watching how you use your phone, don't believe me? just enable tehering on your unlimited data iOS4 device and DON'T go set up the tethering plan over the phone or online and see what happens... happened to a friend of mine.....within a day his phone showed "NO SERVICE"....he basically had to convince AT&T that he pushed "enable tethering" on accident
this is true..I called Apple support and they knew I wasn't using the latest software....if anything this is just Apple and AT&T using each other for both company's personal agendas....I'm sure AT&T wants to prevent Jailbreakers from unlimited tethering and Apple wants to prevent unlocking...iOS4 has given both Apple and AT&T more access to your iPhone than ever...the data nazi's are watching how you use your phone, don't believe me? just enable tehering on your unlimited data iOS4 device and DON'T go set up the tethering plan over the phone or online and see what happens... happened to a friend of mine.....within a day his phone showed "NO SERVICE"....he basically had to convince AT&T that he pushed "enable tethering" on accident
OTA updates by themselves are not indications of malice. These are carrier updates that are being delivered over the carrier network rather than iTunes. The fact that the iPhone still asks for your permission first is the miracle. My WM phones and dumb phones took carrier updates like this without my permission or notice. And that was back in 2005.
So, here's something interesting about NAT traversal: it doesn't always work. To make it work flawlessly, you sometimes have to use a relay server. The protocol for this is TURN. So what's going on with provisioning/etc is to setup the phones on the TURN relays. Communication itself is done over SRTP, so it isn't unencrypted over the air. The provisioning itself is actually not too dissimilar to how push notifications work. Even without FaceTime, the same identifying information is exposed to Apple, and unique GUID-like token is exposed to all 3rd parties that can identify your phone fairly definitively in order to do push. They just won't get your name and other personal identifying information.
The things to be really concerned about here are if the TURN relays aren't handling the retransmission of data in a secure way that prevents abuse by snooping on the relay itself. Any traffic that doesn't go through the relay (i.e... can create a connection using STUN, and thus no need for the relay) is very likely immune from this type of snooping. Also, the collection of the location data (which Apple has documented in the legalese) for the purposes of advertising.
With the level of hosting required to relay video and audio? There is a pretty good chance actually. The data center would need to effectively rival some of the larger MMOs out there to handle the level of expected usage with spikes in the usage happening from time to time.
Wow.
"ZOMG I swear to god 'Alpha' is real! The proof? I CHECKED HIM OUT MYSELF."
Overwhelming evidence right there. I guess Apple is watching our FaceTime chats!
Its like the author of the article has never used a computer. "Why our iPhones need to talk to Apple?!?!" Uh, perhaps to do the IP/Phone number handshake? Any number of reasons they'd need to.
"Why isn't FaceTime encrypted?!? It's so APPLE CAN LOOK AT YOUR FACETIME!" Nice leap to conclusions there. Probably its so the chat is as smooth as possible. Encryption would slow it down. Plus, I'm pretty damn sure Apple could decrypt your video if they really wanted to... they kinda made the device.
"AT&T can push carrier updates to you! My jump to conclusions mat insists this is so they can lock out jailbreakers!"
Whatev.
"ZOMG I swear to god 'Alpha' is real! The proof? I CHECKED HIM OUT MYSELF."
Overwhelming evidence right there. I guess Apple is watching our FaceTime chats!
Its like the author of the article has never used a computer. "Why our iPhones need to talk to Apple?!?!" Uh, perhaps to do the IP/Phone number handshake? Any number of reasons they'd need to.
"Why isn't FaceTime encrypted?!? It's so APPLE CAN LOOK AT YOUR FACETIME!" Nice leap to conclusions there. Probably its so the chat is as smooth as possible. Encryption would slow it down. Plus, I'm pretty damn sure Apple could decrypt your video if they really wanted to... they kinda made the device.
"AT&T can push carrier updates to you! My jump to conclusions mat insists this is so they can lock out jailbreakers!"
Whatev.
Just read the second article posted, the one on the page before this.
I'm bit saying I believe it but damn, I really hope they can't watch in on facetime calls.... Is there anything in our terms that agree to this?
I'm bit saying I believe it but damn, I really hope they can't watch in on facetime calls.... Is there anything in our terms that agree to this?
I'm not even sure the unencrypted claim is true. SRTP is specifically meant to secure these types of data streams from snooping. There's even a good chance that you can send SRTP through a TURN relay in a way that a malicious user at the relay cannot snoop unless the encryption keys were being sent somewhere that user had access to.
And SRTP keys are randomly generated on each new connection, I believe.
More importantly they would lose their major developers. Copy/Paste, Folders, Multitasking, SMS character counter, springboard wallpaper, MMS support, video camera, tethering...
Besides the options mentioned above, how about AppleTalk, SSH, Downloading via Safari, watching unsupported videos, assignable quick shortcuts, ...
Semantics on the words "invent" is as pointless as patents for the end user. Jailbreaking is what brought all those features to iPhone first. Way first. But since ReallyBigFeet seems to consider the JB community as a nasty clan from Mad Max, explaining this might be pointless too.