Latest Podcast



Featured Articles

Ofcom says mobile contracts should ditch inflation-related price rises

Ofcom says mobile contracts should ditch inflation-related price rises

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom wants to ban inflation-related rises in phone and broadband contracts. Instead, it says any potential mid-contract price rises should be set out in pounds and pence.
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating

Global smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast

A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating
Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

New Hutchison/Vodafone network would be biggest UK operator

Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating

UK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023

UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating
Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Which? seeks payout for Samsung and Apple smartphone owners

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating
RSS

Opinion Articles

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The mobile web and your personal information

James Rosewell writes:

The mobile techie community has known about mobile networks and indeed some handsets providing unique information about mobile devices and customers for a long time. Collin Mulliner, a graduate student at the Technische Universitat Berlin, has recently bought the issue to the attention of the public during a talk at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver.

Information such as IMEI and Mobile Phone Number is passed to web servers accessed by a mobile device or Mobile Network Operator (MNO) proxy server in hidden fields called HTTP Headers. The amount of information, format and ultimately usability of the information varies between MNO and mobile device. Practically, the inconsistency of the information makes it of little practical use to web sites. The apparent random nature of the information provided indicates MNOs haven’t really thought through how they’re configuring their gateways and proxies.

The following table shows the HTTP Header (hidden fields) provided by a mobile request received at thefonecast.com yesterday. Notice the x-up-calling-line-id field that contains the mobile number of the requesting device. (We've removed the mobile number from this example). This particular request was provided via the ZXWAP Gateway from ZTE.

 

Header Field
Value
Connection
Keep-Alive
Via
ZXWAP GateWay,ZTE Technologies
Accept
text/html,text/css,multipart/mixed,application/java-archive, application/java, application/x-java-archive, text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor, application/vnd.oma.drm.message, application/vnd.oma.drm.content, application/vnd.oma.dd+xml, application/vnd.oma.drm.rights+xml, application/vnd.oma.drm.rights+wbxml, application/x-nokia-widget, */*
Accept-Charset
iso-8859-1, utf-8; q=0.7, *; q=0.7
 
Accept-Encoding
gzip, deflate, x-gzip, identity; q=0.9
 
Accept-Language
en;q=1.0,id;q=0.5,vi;q=0.5
Host
wap.socmobi.com
User-Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 Samsung/SGH-i450/DBGL3 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413
x-up-calling-line-id
XXXXXXXXXX

The real point is that MNOs are seen to be taking liberties with customers personal information. There are many practical uses to providing this personal information “behind the scenes”. For example:

·    A web site that requests a telephone number can default the telephone number field to the mobile number provided by the mobile network reducing the amount of data the user needs to enter.

·    Multiple interactions can be related to one another without requiring explicit authentication.

On a darker note, once a malicious web site has a mobile number, the text message inbox would become the next target for spam.

Many people will be unhappy with this personal information being provided without consent. MNOs need to establish a clear and consistent policy around the dissemination of such information and ensure customers are in control of the personal information their mobile phone is giving out.

 

Print
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Rate this article:
No rating

Categories: Networks and operators, OpinionNumber of views: 10835

Tags: security opinion internet

Leave a comment

This form collects your name, email, IP address and content so that we can keep track of the comments placed on the website. For more info check our Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use where you will get more info on where, how and why we store your data.
Add comment

Recent Podcasts

The week's top mobile news stories: Vodafone expands, EE celebrates and Europe prepares

Podcast - 19th March 2014

We begin this week's programme by looking at Vodafone's acquisition plans in Spain before moving on to discuss universal mobile chargers and 4G roaming.

There's also time to talk about UK mobile coverage, EE's new customer tracking service, contactless transactions and a smartphone camera that can identify objects hidden behind something else.

Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating

Johan Lodenius of MediaTek talks about wearable devices, smartphone evolution and the importance of driving costs down

Podcast - 13th March 2014

This year's Mobile World Congress was notable for the number of product launches by handset manufacturers. To get a better understanding of smartphone manufacturing, we spoke to Johan Lodenius of semiconductor company MediaTek.

He gave us a simple overview of how 'fabless' manufacturing works, discussed developments in smartphones and wearable devices, contemplated the end of the PC era and talked about the importance of driving costs down.

Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating

Mobile payments, new smartphones, wearable devices, connected cars, CeBIT and David Cameron

Podcast - 12th March 2014

This week's programme opens with a quick look at David Cameron's commitment to 5G technology and the Internet of Things, which was made in a speech at CeBIT.

Iain and Mark then move on to talk about the other big mobile news headlines from the past few days, including the forthcoming Paym m-payment service, new HTC and LG smartphones, the growth of Chinese handset manufacturers, wearable devices, in-car connectivity and damaged iPhones.

Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating

The rise of OTT messaging and the future of SMS: we talk to Stacy Adams of mBlox

Podcast - 7th March 2014

Messaging was very much on the agenda at Mobile World Congress this year, following Facebook's announcement that it was planning to acquire WhatsApp in a 19 billion dollar deal. So if the future for this type of internet-based 'over the top' messaging service looks good, what does this mean for SMS?

To find out more, we spoke to Stacy Adams of mBlox to learn what was happening in the messaging world, to find out how SMS is being integrated with mobile apps - and to discover some of the other ways SMS was being used by businesses today.

Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating

We talk about 4G LTE coverage and device sensors with OpenSignal at Mobile World Congress

Podcast - 6th March 2014

Even at Mobile World Congress, the relevance of the mobile network operator can sometimes be forgotten. So for a different perspective on this year's event, we spoke to Samuel Johnston from British mobile crowd-sourcing firm OpenSignal.

Samuel discussed the announcements from MWC14 and OpenSignal's latest report into 4G LTE coverage around the world, as well as giving us an exclusive insight into OpenSignal's next research subject.

Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Article rating: No rating
RSS
First567810121314Last

Follow thefonecast.com

Twitter @TheFonecast RSS podcast feed
Find us on Facebook Subscribe free via iTunes

Archive Calendar

«October 2024»
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
30123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031123
45678910

Archive

Terms Of Use | Privacy Statement