ManWhoJaped
Keeper of the Watch
- Joined
- April 10, 2011
- Messages
- 777
If you don't work with computers for a living you should not even be talking on the subject let alone berating someone.A few things:
- It isn't a 'security flaw' as much as targeted attacks that demonstrate vulnerabilities - someone deliberately targeted celebrities, found their email address, obtained basic personal information online, and used a password retrieval tool to get into their accounts. People in the weeks since have shown how easy this is to do ON EVERY ONLINE SYSTEM!
It shouldn't even be possible to access someone's cloud data without the phone itself. You could easily make it work tat way, they don't. Of course if you get a hand chip then they are going to allow it to work this way, though this is a really completely pointless security measure.
They do force more security though mostly in a bad way.- Google does NOT force this increased security … I have no clue why you have this dogged insistence about Google. Basically - they are not necessarily more secure.
Technically true but there is no reason for this to be true.More specifically … once you have managed to gain access to an email account …
- Yahoo - you have all Flickr files
- Microsoft - entire SkyDrive is yours
- Facebook - Instagram, etc are yours
- Google - everything is one-click away
- Apple - same …
As you note, it really becomes a different type of issue when people use the 'login with Google' or 'login with Facebook' and link up accounts … but the reality is that for most people, they can hit up dozens of sites with their personal info stored authenticated by Google or Facebook, meaning that if snooped over a public WiFi area it is possible to grab the login details.
That is actually one potential way for the celebs to have been attacked - at the Emmy awards, they had access to WiFi, and supposedly this could have been where the account details were snooped. This isn't an Apple thing, but rather a general internet issue.
My point is that the ability to obtain millions of GMail addresses, and then turn around and from any computer or phone (unless you have two-factor enabled) simply login and access everything … is really no different than what we are seeing with the celebs.
Assuming WiFi was used, basically someone grabbed credentials and used them to login. This is how much of the list put up on the Russian bitcoin site was generated, also through hacks and phishing … but regardless, if the user in question hasn't taken additional steps, the outcome is identical.
As for Google, they are a great company, and I think they are amongst the best in terms of security … but there are different reasons they shouldn't be trusted. Apple makes money selling THINGS. Google makes money by selling … your private data, the contents of your emails, your search history, by compromising browser security to track your activity, and so on. Google 'sells' some things, but they make a few % on it … it is by monetizing search and app activity through targeted ads, made better because they have SO MUCH information about you.
The phone is a physical device on a custom network, therefore it has the inherent potential to be more secure. Completely secure, really. However they are not bothering to use it.
Most people don't have much attached to their emails anyway, but obviously they often have a lot attached to phones. If your cc gets hacked you can get a new one, but having your contacts rifled through is much more serious and having naked pics leaked is even worse.
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2011
- Messages
- 777