Just a heads up, don't steal your Android apps.

[Bateluer]

http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/0...trolls-and-embarrasses-those-who-download-it/

After displaying a "Cracking…" dialog, which in reality just collects and sends out personal data (such as the name, phone number, IMEI, etc), the app sends out the following text message to all of the user’s address book contacts:

Hey,just downlaoded a pirated App off the Internet, Walk and Text for Android. Im stupid and cheap,it costed only 1 buck.Don’t steal like I did!

 

[s44]

Beat me to it!

This is awesome. Don't steal, kids. Paying a pirate site *instead of actual devs* is particularly loathesome.

 

[gsaldivar]

Just a heads up devs: this is a quick way to find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. By all means, do DRM, serial number checks etc. But when you start tinkering with the users data and contacts, you've crossed the line.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure not to purchase any apps by this developer.

 

[ViRGE]

Just a heads up devs: this is a quick way to find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. By all means, do DRM, serial number checks etc. But when you start tinkering with the users data and contacts, you've crossed the line.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure not to purchase any apps by this developer.

This. Purposely running up the user's phone bill is admittedly funny, but no court in the world is going to let that slide.

 

[Anneka]

Can't imagine why would you pirate something on Adroid with Android market offering so much

 

[Kabob]

Just a heads up devs: this is a quick way to find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. By all means, do DRM, serial number checks etc. But when you start tinkering with the users data and contacts, you've crossed the line.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure not to purchase any apps by this developer.

+1, it's funny and all but they would get killed in court with a lawsuit, pirated software or not.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Can't imagine why would you pirate something on Adroid with Android market offering so much

Because aside from all the bitching about wanting QUALITY and TRY BEFORE BUY and I CONTRIBUTE PLENTY AND PIRACY IS A WAY TO PAY ME BACK, piracy is driven by one thing. Free stuff.

Free is cheaper than even a dollar.

 

[Bateluer]

+1, it's funny and all but they would get killed in court with a lawsuit, pirated software or not.

How would they lose in a lawsuit? You think the person who downloaded it is going to march into the court room and complain that their stolen merchandise didn't work?

 

[Mopetar]

Just a heads up devs: this is a quick way to find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. By all means, do DRM, serial number checks etc. But when you start tinkering with the users data and contacts, you've crossed the line.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure not to purchase any apps by this developer.

If they can even prove who did it. What's to stop you or I from doing this for a cracked version of Angry Birds? People have been hiding Trojans in password generators or cracked versions of software on the Pirate Bay for years and I can't think of one instance of anyone trying to sue.

I'm not so sure many people would either. As soon as they hit court the other lawyer is going to start asking about all of the other pirated apps that they have and probably open them up to being hit with a lawsuit in return. It would be like a criminal complaining that someone else tried to break into the house where he keeps all of the drugs and money.

 

[gorcorps]

How would they lose in a lawsuit? You think the person who downloaded it is going to march into the court room and complain that their stolen merchandise didn't work?

Courts don't look at "if the ends justify the means" type of BS... they look at simply did somebody breaks the law or not. One party could probably have a decent lawsuit for the privacy concerns and whatever else that cracked app did to their phone. Then the app devs might have a decent lawsuit since they now have proof this person/people did indeed pirate their app. One does not make the other case invalid, they're 2 separate crimes in the eyes of the court. It's entirely plausible that both sides could win their respective suits.

 

[cronos]

Apparently the developer of the original app claims that they didn't have anything to do with this:

Hello,
We are a bit surprised about this publicity.
We are the makers of the OFFICIAL Walk and Text app.
We also received some questions wether we have anything to do with this file.
And the answer is NO, we do not!
This could very well be seen from the signature of the file (reported on some other forum) and from the code structure.
Anyone, anywhere, can get a hold of our APK and rip it and put what they want in it.
Truth is our App got hacked 2 months ago 1 week after it was launched, we removed all of the files from the fileservers, DMCA reports and everything, took us 2 weeks. Then the hackers obviously decided to get back at us and put bad publicity on our side. This file is not to be found on public fileservers (not to our knowledge, email us if you find anything)
We only find the files on some Asian torrents (and rapidshare as google alerts reports)
There is nothing we can do about this file.
please do not download files from outside the Market, or at least check the permissions.
Our OFFICIAL App doesn’t even ask for the Internet permission, how are we going to send private information anywhere?!?
With that said, the original blog posts come from 2 anti piracy companies, AVAST and Symantec. They even insisted that the file was found on the Android Market. Symantec quotes a copy of the License Verification Structure, LVL, to be something an official App has. Well yeah of course, if they rip our App, you will see LVL in there… I leave it to you to do the math and their integrity about this situation.
We were never contacted for a comment prior to their blog posts!
We are sorry to be involved and we did not ask for this publicity and once again have nothing to do with this!

 

[Kabob]

How would they lose in a lawsuit? You think the person who downloaded it is going to march into the court room and complain that their stolen merchandise didn't work?

No, but I think the person who pirated said software would match into court and say that they downloaded an app that collects and distributes their personal information and they'd win. Sure, there'd be counter suits and such but for a legitimate corporation to do what they're doing is a big no-no.

 

[Bateluer]

No, but I think the person who pirated said software would match into court and say that they downloaded an app that collects and distributes their personal information and they'd win. Sure, there'd be counter suits and such but for a legitimate corporation to do what they're doing is a big no-no.

Not really, even in the pirated app, it still presents you with permissions it'll need. Permissions which you grant access too, in this case, full access to your personal data.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Apparently the developer of the original app claims that they didn't have anything to do with this:

That's exactly what I'd say if I did that : p

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

+1, it's funny and all but they would get killed in court with a lawsuit, pirated software or not.

How so. When you install an app it tells you it needs access to certain things. You then click ok, thus approving of it's use.

 

[gorcorps]

How so. When you install an app it tells you it needs access to certain things. You then click ok, thus approving of it's use.

Within reason. When the pizza guy rings your doorbell you have to open the door, but that doesn't mean it's okay for him to stroll into your house and start going through all your stuff.

 

[Bateluer]

Within reason. When the pizza guy rings your doorbell you have to open the door, but that doesn't mean it's okay for him to stroll into your house and start going through all your stuff.

What if the pizza guy rings your door bell, then announces that he's going to enter your house, eat your cereal, drink your beer, rifle through your magazines, and use your restroom before you answer the door? If you answer the door, you're not exactly guilt free. This is essentially what an app does when it request permissions, tell you what its able to access and what it could do.

 

[gorcorps]

What if the pizza guy rings your door bell, then announces that he's going to enter your house, eat your cereal, drink your beer, rifle through your magazines, and use your restroom before you answer the door? If you answer the door, you're not exactly guilt free. This is essentially what an app does when it request permissions, tell you what its able to access and what it could do.

No it's not, from what I see it asks permission to access your files. It's generalized and not specific enough to know what it will do to those files. If it said "do you agree to send a text message to every person in your contact list in addition to us taking your personal info and storing it in a place out of your control?" then maybe I'd agree. I'm not trying to condone pirating, just this type of thing isn't okay and it does NOT warn you what it's going to do... so that's just silly.

I remember an IM app that came out on the iphone where you can tie all of your AIM, yahoo, facebook etc chats into the one app. This app had a single account that you made prior to using it, and then linked all of your other stuff to it. Well if it detected it was pirated it would lock out that account to where you couldn't even use the desktop version. The worst part? Those AIM, yahoo, facebook etc were tied to that single account so you couldn't just make another account and link them all up again. To get your account back you had to show your itunes order info to prove you finally bought it. Until then you couldn't use that chat program again. IMO that's a perfect deterrent and doesn't step over any boundaries.

 

[tommo123]

holding your accounts hostage isn't overboard?

 

[gorcorps]

It only held your account for that program. It couldn't stop you from using them in other programs, but you couldn't make another profile in that program and use the same AIM name. It was already registered to your first account that's now locked.