Your Cheating Heart: iPhone App Finds Wife With Another Man (ABC News)

When Apple released its new iOS 5 operating system to go with itsiPhone 4S, it touted a new app called "Find My Friends" as a great way to track and meet up with friends. If they agree, you can see their locations on a map on your screen.

But the app's enterprising customers are apparently already finding other uses. If the online posts appearing on a chat forum atMacRumors.com are for real, "Find My Friends" may have already claimed its first marriage.

Saturday night on MacRumors, a man saying he lived in New York City posted this:

"Divorcing wife. Thanks iPhone 4s and Find My Friends.

"I got my wife a new 4s and loaded up find my friends without her knowing. She told me she was at her friends house in the east village. I've had suspicions about her meeting this guy who live uptown. Lo and behold, Find my Friends has her right there.

"I just texted her asking where she was and the dumb b---- said she was on 10th Street!! Thank you Apple, thank you App Store, thank you all. These beautiful treasure trove of screen shots [sic] going to play well when I meet her ... at the lawyer's office in a few weeks.

"thankfully, she's the rich one."

It has not been determined whether the story posted on MacRumors was, in fact, authentic, and the man did not immediately reply to a request from ABC News for comment. But more than 100,000 people have viewed the posts, according to MacRumors. More than 300 of them replied with expressions of sympathy, skepticism and -- this being the Internet -- a few less-than-savory jokes.

Arnold Kim, the editorial director of MacRumors, said it was "definitely a busy thread." MacRumors did not try to verify the man's story (if, in fact, it was a man), but said everyone who registers for its forums has to validate their email when they register.

"Find My Friends" uses the iPhone or iPad's built-in Global Positioning System to see your friends' locations on a map on the screen of your device. GPS can be accurate to within a few feet for civilian uses.

Apple says "The Find My Friends app is a great way to share your location with people who are important to you" -- whether you're trying to meet friends at a crowded concert or make sure your kids get safely home from school.

The man was back with a new post less than an hour later, including a couple of screen grabs showing the location of his wife was on East 65th St., though she sent him a text message saying, "Was hard to find stupid cab hate meat packing...."

The husband again: "She said she is in meat packing district which is on 12th street. I DONT THINK SO. Appreicate [sic] the support. not my finest hour here but going to get better soon."

The new iPhone 4S and operating system have been off-the-charts successes for Apple, which said this morning that it sold more than four million iPhone 4S in three days, and that 25 million people are now using iOS 5.

Technology watchers are particularly struck by Siri -- the voice-recognition "personal assistant" built into the new software that accepts spoken commands, answers questions, and is eerily intelligent in its responses.

There was a memorial service Sunday night for Steve Jobs on the campus of Stanford University, near Apple's corporate headquarters in California, amid widespread stories that he was deeply involved in the next iPhone -- the replacement for the iPhone 4S.

The presumably-jilted husband put up one last post Saturday night: "what really chaps my a-- is not the cheating but the fact that they were probably admiring and laughing over the new phone I BOUGHT. haha. well someone about to get the last laugh tonight."

And that was the last from him. The whole thing may have been a joke, or a domestic tragedy. Ben Crompton, who writes the Pocket Lint blog, said there have certainly been other apps before, such as Google Latitude, that let you track people through GPS signals, but Apple will make it trendy.

"The burning issue seems to be that it is a very powerful tool to have," he wrote, "bringing with it huge amounts of info to the user as well as delivering plenty of info about the user to others. For some this power will outdo the user's knowledge of how to use it properly."

"Still, on the up side," he concluded, "maybe Siri will be able to offer some marriage guidance advice."

source: gma.yahoo.com

Facebook Privacy: Lawsuit Charges Facebook Tracked Users Even After they Logged Off …

A Mississippi woman has sued Facebook in federal court, accusing it of violating federal wiretap laws to track her online activity, even when she wasn't logged onto the site.

Facebook denies the allegations, but it has conceded in the past that it inadvertently tracked users through so-called cookies -- small files a website sends to your computer when you visit. It has said it fixed the problem before the Mississippi suit was filed.

"Leading up to September 23, 2011, Facebook tracked, collected, and stored its users' wire or electronic communications, including but not limited to portions of their Internet browsing history even when the users were not logged-in to Facebook," reads the complaint by Brooke Rutledge of Lafayette County, Miss. "Plaintiff did not give consent or otherwise authorize Facebook to intercept, track, collect, and store her wire or electronic communications, including but not limited to her Internet browsing history when not logged-in to Facebook."

It is not the first lawsuit of its kind (there are suits in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana), and Facebook is not the only large company to be accused of violating visitors' privacy. But the issue has spread since Faceook's Mark Zuckerberg introduced the site's new Timeline and Ticker features in September. "All your stories, all your apps, a new way to express who you are," he said at the introduction.

Facebook sent ABC News a one-line statement in response to the suit: "We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously"

Facebook has been promoting what it calls "frictionless sharing," so that members can opt to let their friends know automatically what music they like or films they've seen. If you choose, Facebook will tell your contacts through a regular feed of information.

But do people want Facebook to know where they go online to other sites? Two congressmen and 10 public advocacy groups have urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate.

Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus,wrote to the FTC: "We believe that tracking users without their knowledge or consent raises serious privacy concerns. When users log out of Facebook, they are under the impression that Facebook is no longer monitoring their activities. We believe this impression should be the reality."

Facebook said the issue was overblown. The social networking site did concede, though, that it found that three of its "cookies" -- small files a website leaves in your computer when you visit -- "inadvertently included unique identifiers when the user had logged out of Facebook," according to Andrew Noyes, Facebook's manager of public policy communications in Washington. "However, we did not store these identifiers for logged out users," he said in an email to ABC News.

EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has said Facebook was using "supercookies" -- more troublesome than the regular cookies used by most commercial websites.

EPIC said Facebook did not take any action until an Australian blogger, Nik Cubrilovic, posted about the tracking after a year of questioning the company about it. And it said the new Timeline and Ticker -- which Facebook hopes will allow "frictionless" sharing with friends -- may cause users accidental embarrassment, even if the company means well.

"It is difficult for users to keep up with Facebook's frequent changes and adjust their privacy settings accordingly," said David Jacobs of EPIC, "and the company has not clearly explained what it plans to do with the wealth of new user information that will be collected as a result of the new applications."

All this has become a war of words. On the one hand, there have now been countless cases in which people inadvertently shared things on social media sites that they later regretted. Would you want some future employer to see pictures from that party you went to Saturday? Do you know what settings would prevent that?

On the other hand, what's the harm to most people if a website knows your interests? That they'll show you ads tailored to your preferences?

"Some groups believe people shouldn't have the option to easily share the songs they are listening to or other content with their friends," said Facebook's Noyes. "We couldn't disagree more and have built a system that people can choose to use, and we hope people will give it a try."

source: yahoo.com