Your smartphone is spying on you!

Nowadays, people are relying more and more on their Smartphone, they even save all their private information on their phones without thinking of the consequences. A group of scientists from Indiana University and the Naval Surface Warfare, built a cellphone spy malware called “PlaceRaider” to show that smartphones are a major security risk, and that they could be turned against their users.

This malware works on all versions of Android 2.3 Gingerbread and above.  It’s functions consist of taking random pictures every two seconds of wherever its user is to produce a 3D picture without attracting attention.  The pictures are sent to a server that filter the numerous graphics and rebuild the scene in a 3D format, getting as a result a clear and detailed idea of the place. This is possible through the orientation and location functions that are incorporated in the program

The access that SpaceRaider requires are similar to the ones of many advanced camera applications, so users can install it without knowing that they are giving permission to this malware to take pictures and send them. Additionally, once it is installed, the shutter sound is deactivated, so the victim will not notice that pictures are being taken. Therefore, burglars could download the physical space to steal the objects in it, such as information on computer monitors, financial documents, and personal information.

              Pictures taken  at different hours

However, we don’t have to be afraid “yet.”  As I said before, it was built as an academic exercise, but can you imagine yourself being stalked and having things stolen from you through your cellphone? What if the government were to use this kind of malware to spy on its citizens?. It is  clear that we are losing more of our privacy every day, so we must be more careful with the programs that we choose to download from the internet,we should always have antivirus software installed and above all else, keep our private information in a safe place.

-You can find further information in this research paper, written by the scientists from Indiana University and the Naval Surface Warfare:http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.5982v1.pdf

Capture a moment, capture a life

Our memory is like a huge box where you can store all the moments that you want. However, it is so fragile that in a blink of an eye, you can forget things that you want to remember for the rest of your life. Now, you can keep those memories in a piece of paper, in your laptop, and you can bring them wherever you want. How? with photographs.

Nowadays, most of people have a camera with them in their cellphones, their laptops, digital cameras, etc. People can take a camera, snap, and record every instant that they want. It is like a diary in which you can appreciate in detail things that you can’t in a specific second. Photographs can change our minds, can change the way how we see the world. They are a testament to the history of life of all human beings, of nations, of significant global situations, and also, a testament to the most negative of humanity.

Pictures can transmit different emotions that are expressed forever in paper or digital media and people can interpret them in different ways. It’s like a travel to the past, and it’s free! You can even feel the same way you felt when the photo was taken. It’s a pure moment that no one can take it away from you, because it’s there in that piece of paper. However, technology has made this "purity" don’t exist anymore. Programs like Photoshop have made that reality can be transformed so that all we see is not real. You can look like a fat woman even if you are the skinniest person in the whole world or vice versa.

In addition, in this time social networks have spread very fast, and the photographs that you show there reflects people’s identity. Nevertheless, there are a minority that change its identity in order to be someone else, or just to make fool of others.

In conclusion, pictures can “say” so much things when you look at them. You can interpret them in different ways. For that reason, my question is: do you think that pictures can reflect what we feel in a specific moment? or now nothing is real?

Here is the first picture ever taken by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.