What is Traitorware? Your digital camera may embed metadata into photographs with the camera's serial number or your location.
Your printer may be incorporating a secret code on every page it prints which could be used to identify the printer and potentially the person who used it. If Apple puts a particularly creepy patent it has recently applied for into use, you can look forward to a day when your iPhone may record your voice, take a picture of your location, record your heartbeat, and send that information back to the mothership. This is traitorware: devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy.
IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy. Angry Birds Dev Gets Angry Over WSJ. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article examining popular iPhone and Android apps, including the mega-hit game , to determine what kinds of communications they were transmitting while they were running. Conducted by David Campbell of the software security company Electric Alchemy , the experiments involved using apps in isolated environments on devices restricted to running a single application at a time; the phones' data traffic was forced through a Wifi connection where it could be collected and analyzed.
The Journal found that the multi-million-selling iOS game was among the most egregious violators of Apple's policy not to transmit user data without permission, claiming the game transmitted the user name and password, contacts, location and phone ID to third parties. Rovio quickly and strongly denied the allegation, however, saying the report was just "vague enough to instigate mistrust in our users. " Source: Develop.