LinkedIn mobile app subscribers may be surprised to learn that the calendar entries on their iPhones or iPads— which may include details about meeting locations, participants, dial-in information, passwords and sensitive meeting notes — are transmitted back to LinkedIn’s servers without their knowledge.
Mobile security researchers will present those findings at a security workshop at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday. The researchers, Yair Amit and Adi Sharabani, discovered that LinkedIn’s mobile app for iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, included an opt-in feature that allows users to view their iOS calendar entries within the app. Once users opt in to that feature, however, LinkedIn automatically transmits their calendar entries to its servers. LinkedIn grabs details for every calendar on the iOS device, which may include both personal and corporate calendar entries.
That practice, which is not communicated to users, may violate Apple’s privacy guidelines, which expressly prohibit any app from transmitting users’ data without their permission. A similar practice came to light earlier this year when a developer noticed that Path, the popular mobile social network, was uploading entire address books to its servers without users’ knowledge. That practice came under scrutiny by members of Congress. In response, Path said it would stop the practice and destroy the data it had collected.
More here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/linkedins-leaky-mobile-app-has-access-to-your-meeting-notes/
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