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Iphone

World's Creepiest iPhone App Pulled After Outcry 459

Posted by samzenpus from the was-that-inappropriate? dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Ben Grubb reports that an iPhone app that essentially allowed users to stalk women nearby using a location-based social networking service has been pulled from the iTunes app store by its developer after an outcry of criticism including a comment by Gizmodo labelling the 'Girls Around Me' app as the 'world's creepiest' app and a comment in The New York Times Bits blog, which said it 'definitely' won the prize for being 'too creepy'. The 'Girls Around Me' app utilized publicly available data to show a map with women who had checked-in to locations nearby using Foursquare and let users view Facebook information of those ladies if they had tied their Facebook account to their Foursquare account and if their Facebook account privacy settings were lax enough to allow any user to access it. The promotional website used for marketing the app states that the service 'helps you see where nearby girls are checking in, and shows you what they look like and how to get in touch, adding 'In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control! Reveal the hottest nightspots, who's in them, and how to reach them.' Foursquare yanked the Girls Around Me app's access to its data, which in turn led to the app's developer removing it from iTunes as it didn't work properly. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the company behind the app defended its creation: 'Since the app's launch till last Friday nobody ever raised a privacy concern because, again, it is clearly stated that Girls Around Me cannot show the user more data than [what Foursqure or Facebook] already does.'"
Encryption

First Secure Quantum Crypto Network Up and Running 102

Posted by timothy from the all-new-perfect-forever-place-your-bets dept.
John Lam was one of many readers to send in news that on Thursday, "at a conference in Vienna, Austria, as reported by the BBC, a European Community science working group built a quantum backbone using 200-km of standard commercial optical fiber running among seven sites and successfully demonstrated the first secure quantum cryptographic key distribution network. In addition, each of the seven links used a different kind of quantum encryption, demonstrating interoperability between the technologies. To paraphrase, the project focused on the trusted repeater paradigm and developed an architecture allowing seamless integration of heterogeneous quantum-key distribution-link devices in a unified framework. Network node-modules managing all classical communication tasks provide the underlying quantum devices with authentic classical channels. The node-module architecture uses a layered model to provision network-wide, end-to-end, provably secure key distribution."
Security

Submission + - Ticketmaster claims hacking

Submitted by FlopEJoe
FlopEJoe writes: Ticketmaster claims that RMG Technologies is providing software to avoid security measures including the Captcha. Even to the point of utilizing bots to get large blocks of tickets. RMG says it just "provides a specialized browser for ticket brokers." Personally, I don't miss the days of camping out for tickets and believe technology should make things easier and fairer. But it seems only the speculators win when tickets sell out in minutes and they can put them up on eBay for 10 times the face value. TFA is a good read for anyone interested in how tickets are allocated. "A hearing on Ticketmaster's suit is scheduled for Oct. 15."

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