Posts Tagged ‘smartphones’

United Arab Emirates Blackberry users began to experience a drastic drop in battery life after they updated a firmware pushed to them from the major carrier of UAE, Etisalat.

The new firmware was supposed to “improve” the smartphone performance. It didn’t, but did help the malicious ware within to spy on user activities. According to a blog post on Dutch Web site Automation Guide, RIM explained that it seems that Etisalat had distributed a telecommunications surveillance application that was designed and developed by a California based company called SS8, in another word, the update was not written by RIM.

SS8 develops communications surveillance products for law enforcement. The SS8′s application that was put into the UAE BlackBerries will send received messages from the user back to a central server. This information was confirmed by Research In Motion(RIM), the BlackBerries maker on Tuesday, who offered a “spyware removal” firmware in response.

So far, we had yet to receive any “real” response from SS8. And as for Etisalat, they only said that is a “slight technical fault” and subscribers can uninstall the update by pressing 101 on their phones.

Maybe in the near future, we may need to purchase an optional “spyware removal” apps for our smartphones.