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PrivaCy Prevents These iPhone Apps From Spying on You

Sébastien Page ∙ August 25, 2009

Last week I wrote an article about how certain applications are spying on you and tracking some of your personal data. Although the practice is legal, it is nonetheless very controversial.

Thanks to the collaboration of Saurik, BigBoss, and the major companies tracking your apps stats, it is now possible to opt out of being spied on via an application appropriately named PricaCy.

Pinch Media realized this fact, and took the lead in contacting me regarding getting this feature out there to all the users of jailbroken devices: they care.

With BigBoss, we then contacted all of the other providers, getting not only their blessing, but also their technical expertise in disabling their systems.

The result is PrivaCy: a new Settings panel that allows you to selectively opt-out of sending anonymous usage statistics to each of these providers.

This extension was a team effort, and was able to be executed as quickly as it was thanks to the help and interest of the companies involved.

I am positively surprised to see how the major tracking providers were proactive and willing to address the matter by collaborating with Saurik and BigBoss.

If you're slightly concerned about your privacy, I suggest you download PrivaCy, which is available for free from Cydia. Hopefully, Apple will release a similar feature to allow the opt out from data tracking for non-jailbroken iPhones also.

Gpush Brings Gmail Push Notification to the iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

Gpush is a new application available in the App Store that brings Gmail push notification to your iPhone. I have been using Gpush for a few days now and it works as advertised.

I initially installed this app because I was waiting for an important email and I didn't want to refresh my inbox every 5 minutes. So I paid the $0.99 and downloaded Gpush.

The set up is very easy and straightforward. You just have to enter your Gmail username and password and click "save". Then you can go to the settings and choose how you want to be notified. You can be notified with a sound (same as the new voicemail sound), an alert (the pop up showed in the image above), and a badge.

Right after installing Gpush, I tried it out by sending an email to myself from my Hotmail account. The push notification came almost instantly, both on my iPhone and my PC. I was really impressed! But notifications don't always come that quickly. I sometimes receive notifications a couple minutes after receiving the email on my PC.

One downside to this app is that you only get notifications of new emails. You don't actually get the email in your inbox. So after receiving a notification, you still have to launch the mail.app and retrieve the email.

Another downside, somewhat bigger, is that these push notifications seem to drain my battery very quickly. I'm not sure about that because I've been way deep in Michigan for a few days with no wifi, only running on Edge, which is notoriously bad for battery. I don't know if it's my constant twittering or my girlfriend playing too much Bejeweled, but it does seem my battery life hasn't been really good since I installed Gpush.

All in all, Gpush is a good and cheap application that does exactly what it's supposed to. However, it can become very annoying if like me, you receive a couple hundred emails a day.

You can download Gpush [iTunes Link] from the App Store for $0.99. I look forward to reading your thoughts about this application.

Weekly iPhone Wrapup: TomTom, Torrents, Yahoo Calendar, Videos, and More…

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

Here is a summary of the articles that were posted on the blog this week.

TomTom for iPhone Now Available in the App Store

After making its debuts in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, the TomTom iPhone app is finally available for download in the App Store.

Your iPhone is spying on you

Some applications available in the App Store are spying on you, tracking your personal data and reporting this information “home”.

Download torrents on your iPhone with Torentula

Ever wanted to download torrents on your iPhone? It is now possible thanks to an application called Torrentula.

How to sync Yahoo calendar with your iPhone

Until now there was no way to sync Yahoo calendar with your iPhone calendar but Yahoo wrote a blog post about how to do that over the air.

Edit videos on your iPhone 2G or 3G

Here is a hack that allows you to view the videos you record with Cycorder or VideoRecorder directly in your Camera Roll. Additionally, you can trim the videos, exactly like on an iPhone 3GS.

iPhone Nano into the wild

We took this mini iPhone for a ride at the local Apple Store in San Diego.

iPhone Nano Into the Wild

Sébastien Page ∙ August 22, 2009

That's what my cousin brought back from his last trip in Hong Kong. They proudly call it "i-phone Nano" (not iPhone Nano). The interface is very similar to the iPhone but obviously with much less functionality.

We took this mini iPhone for a ride at the local Apple Store in San Diego. A few people (including a couple Apple employees) really thought it was some type of prototype. It was fun messing with them for a minute...

Edit Videos on Your iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G

Sébastien Page ∙ August 21, 2009

iPhone Download Blog reader kper sent me a very good hack for iPhone 2G or 3G owners who would like to have the same video editing capabilities as the iPhone 3GS. Basically, this allows you to view the videos you record with Cycorder or VideoRecorder directly in your Camera Roll. Additionally, you can trim the videos, exactly like on an iPhone 3GS.

How to Sync Yahoo Calendar With Your iPhone Calendar

Sébastien Page ∙ August 19, 2009

A couple months ago, I wrote an article on how to sync Google calendar with your iPhone calendar. Until now there was no way to sync Yahoo calendar with your iPhone calendar but Yahoo wrote a blog post about how to do that over the air.

It's very simple but it does require you to run the latest 3.0 firmware. It is also important to note that "once you start syncing your Calendar with your iPhone you will be upgraded to Yahoo! Calendar Beta automatically. You will not be able to go back to the old calendar product once this is complete".

How to sync Yahoo calendar with the iPhone:

1. Go to Settings > Mails, Contacts, Calendars >Add Account > Other

2. Tap "Add CalDAV Account"

3 . For the Server settings, simply type "yahoo"

4. Type in your Yahoo! username and password you use to signin to your calendar.

5. Click "Next" and it should verify your information.

6. You're done :)

Next time you open the calendar app on your iPhone, you will be able to choose to view your Yahoo calendar. Every time you will load the yahoo calendar, it will sync over the air.

Your iPhone is Spying on You

Sébastien Page ∙ August 18, 2009

I just read an interesting article by the Dev Team showing that some applications available in the App Store are spying on you, tracking your personal data and reporting this information "home".

The apps in question are applications using Pinch Media, a mobile analytics company that aims at helping developers figure out how their users interact with their apps (ie. how long they spend on the app every day, is it accessed over 3G or wifi, etc...). Apparently, apps that use Pinch Media are doing much more than reporting your interactions with the app and go as far as tracking the following information:

iPhone's unique ID iPhone Model OS Version Application version (in this case, camera zoom 1.x) If the application is cracked/pirated If your iPhone is jailbroken Time & date you start the application Time & date you close the application Your current latitude & longitude Your gender (if Facebook enabled) Your birth month (if Facebook enabled) Your birth year (if Facebook enabled)

Pinch Media says the company is no spyware as it requires YOUR approval to track the data, but as the Dev Team explains:

Being an approved app, it must first ask you for permission to use your location. If you tap “Don’t Allow”, it will ask you again in about a minute, the next time its ad changes. So you either stop using this app (because it pesters you so much about the location question), or you finally submit and tap “OK”. From that point on, your location and path info (your actual physical path through your area each time you launch the app) belongs to Pinch Media, Inc. We think that’s a Pinch too much.

I don't know how concerned you are about your privacy and I assume most people wouldn't care about that. Although the data being recorded is anonymous, I am not necessarily excited about a company that doesn't disclose what type of data is collected, and more importantly, how this data is used.

What do you think?

TomTom for iPhone Now Available in the App Store

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

After making its debuts in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, the TomTom iPhone app is finally available for download in the App Store.

TomTom for iPhone doesn't come for cheap though... Priced at $99, this fully featured turn-by-turn GPS system is more expensive than some dedicated GPS units. At least TomTom doesn't require you to get a $10/month subscription fee like AT&T NAvigator.

There is still no word about the TomTom Car Adapter Kit but I suppose it will be available soon.

I haven't tried the TomTom app myself yet and I'm still wondering if it's really worth it compared to the $35 competitor CoPilot Live. I guess I will wait for a while and read more reviews to figure out what seems to be the best GPS out there.

Download Links:

TomTom US & Canada - $99.99 TomTom Western Europe - $139.99 TomTom Australia - $79.99 TomTom New Zealand - $94.99

If you've already tried the TomTom for iPhone application, please leave a comment below and tell us what you think.

Give A Matte Twist to Your iPhone UI

Sébastien Page ∙ August 15, 2009

WinterBoard is one of my favorite jailbreak apps because it allows me to customize my iPhone and make it "stand out" from the crowd. One of the latest tweaks I found to push the customization a little further is to have a full custom UI.

There is a great-looking UI tweak available in Cydia called Matte UI Graphite.

Here are a few screenshots of what the new UI looks like. Changes are very subtle, yet very elegant...

How to Fix Cydia Crashes

Sébastien Page ∙ August 14, 2009

A lot of people who recently jailbroke their iPhones are having issues with Cydia crashing when launching it. There is a quick and dirty fix for that and it requires to either SSH into your iPhone or use iPhoneBrowser and delete a few files.

Apparently the problem is caused by some corrupted repositories that make Cydia crash within the first few seconds of loading it.

To fix this, simply navigate to /var/lib/apt/lists and delete all the files in this folder except for the folder called "partial".

Then reboot your iPhone and launch Cydia. It should load without crashing.

QuickScroll Helps You Scroll Very Quickly

Sébastien Page ∙ August 13, 2009

QuickScroll is a new application available in Cydia that lets you scroll through documents and web pages very quickly.

Have you ever opened a long web page or PDF document on your iPhone looking for some information you know is way down the page?

Without QuickScroll, you have to keep scrolling down forever. Fortunately, with QuickScroll, it's just going to take you 3 taps and a couple seconds.

Once you have installed QuickScroll, simply tap 3 times anywhere on the page and a dialog will show up. Drag the green box up and down to quickly go wherever you want on the page.

If you're browsing a PDF document, tap 3 times and a dialog will appear. If you know what page you want to go to, enter it and it will take you there immediately.

I think QuickScroll is another must-have application utility that should be available on the iPhone by default.

Give it a try. You will love it.

AttachmentSaver Saves Your Email Attachments to Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 29, 2009

AttachmentSaver is a new application that adds an extension which allows you to save your email attachments on your iPhone. This feature should be available by default but for some obscure reasons, Apple hasn't deemed it necessary...

AttachmentSaver gives you the ability to download attachments of all types, whether supported by the Mail.app or not, and save them into a folder on your iPhone disk.

Files are downloaded to ~/Library/Downloads (/private/var/mobile/Library/Attachments) and it's recommended to install iFile to access the attachments you download.

This app is available from the Cydia Store for $1.99.