Mobile

In the beginning, there was the web and you accessed it though the browser and all was good. Stuff didn’t download until you clicked on something; you expected cookies to be tracking you and you always knew if HTTPS was being used. In general, the casual observer had a pretty good idea of what was going on between the client and the server. Not so in the mobile app world of today. These days, there’s this great big fat abstraction layer on top of everything that keeps you pretty well disconnect...

When news came through recently about the Bondi Westfield shopping centre’s new “Find my car” feature, the security and privacy implications almost jumped off the page: “Wait – so you mean all I do is enter a number plate – any number plate – and I get back all this info about other cars parked in the centre? Whoa.” If that statement sounds a bit liberal, read on and you’ll see just how much information Westfield is intentionally disclosing to the public. Intended use Let’s begin with how the...