Potential privacy concerns with Apple's MobileMe service

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A reader from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has discovered what could be potentially a significant privacy breach in Apple's MobileMe resgistration renewal process.

According to the reader, Apple is inadvertently displaying MobileMe subscribers' data like contact names, notes, phone numbers, dates of birth, etc, to other users in what TUAW calls "very specific conditions".

The potential breach was discovered when the reader, based in the UK, renewed his MobileMe account. In the time between when he renewed the account and MobileMe actually applied the renewal, each time the user logged off and back on to the service, he was shown a list of contacts and their information - the concern being that none of them were his.

"Each time I logged off and on I got a different address book. All the other options were disabled (because my renewal was being processed) but clicking the Contacts icon showed me an address book", the reader wrote. The problem being it just wasn't his address book...it was several different address books over several logins.

The user reportedly investigated the information and found it legitimate, but not before first taking screenshots of each address book he encountered. The privacy breach closed once the MobileMe registration was processed at Apple's end.

Being concerned for his own data, he contacted Apple via both web-chat and email and received an automated email response and no further reply as yet, and web-chat staff reporting that they have not heard other users experiencing the issue.

TUAW has contacted Apple about the report.

#1 Electric Jolt on 13 Oct 2009 - 01:34

Apple's MobileMe service may be so great. But because it has had so many problems launching and still continues to be the only service that causes so many problems even now out of all Apple services, it deserves an inexpensive price tag, because it doesn't stand up to be a valuable expensive service.

(5 replies) #2 m.keeley on 13 Oct 2009 - 01:47

It doesn't rain, it pours! Not a good news week for Apple and it's only Monday!

Never been impressed by MobileMe, ignoring the problems they've had with it, just doesn't seem good value.

#2.1 Electric Jolt on 13 Oct 2009 - 01:50

#2.2 Andrew Lyle on 13 Oct 2009 - 02:29

I was going to say the samething.

Apple is having a bad couple of weeks, especially with Windows 7 around the corner. I'll be interesting to see Apple's newest commercial!

#2.3 m.keeley on 13 Oct 2009 - 02:32

At least MS tend to space their problems out!

#2.4 Shadrack on 13 Oct 2009 - 02:36

m.keeley said,

It really isn't the best

. I got it with my iPhone so that I could take advantage of push email. This works great, but the webmail interface is terribly slow (and likes to refresh often which takes forever). I do like using it as a way to manage the content on my iPhone, but it isn't worth the cost. They should make it free for people who have iPhones or Macs. As if Apple users don't hand over enough money to Apple already.

#2.5 REM2000 on 13 Oct 2009 - 07:53

if you have a mac aswell, mobile me comes into it's own. It's really handy having everything sync'd up. It's handy to share photo's with friends and family from iPhoto and for friends and family to upload their photos back. Also the file sharing is handy too, when ive needed to share a large file with friends.

(1 reply) #3 Crankenstein on 13 Oct 2009 - 01:59

It's a feature... lol

#3.1 jandler on 13 Oct 2009 - 13:09

Actually, I think they are doing this as a back up procedure when they heard of the news regarding sidekick. Their strategy is probably to display the data to everyone so that it will be everywhere. You can't lose data anymore because everyone knows your info!

(2 replies) #4 Frank Fontaine on 13 Oct 2009 - 03:08

With Android you can sync all your contacts, including your mail address book to your google account and what's more it is free. Something i'd sure miss if I had an iPhone

#4.1 betasp on 13 Oct 2009 - 03:23

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/a...n&answer=138740
Um, no... you would not miss a thing.

#4.2 Shadrack on 13 Oct 2009 - 05:11

Yup. iPhone can be setup to sync with lots of services, not just MobileMe. What makes me mad is how "find my iPhone" is only available to MobileMe subscribers. Completly tagged on to sell more subscriptions.

#5 Riva on 13 Oct 2009 - 13:17

Apple is having a very bad week. Stevie must be sacking people like cwazy

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