“Is it better for mobile apps to be easy-to-use, or secure?” Parmy Olson asks for Forbes. “It’s a question that app developers constantly grapple with in the face of a competitive landscape, and it can sometimes take a data breach like Snapchat’s to push them in the latter direction.”
“Earlier this week security researcher Daniel Wood disclosed his findings on how Starbucks was storing data about users of its iOS app in plain text and locally on a device, making passwords and even geolocation data about users vulnerable to theft if the wrong kind of hacker got hold of their iPhone,” Olson reports. “Starbucks has said it knows about the app’s vulnerability and that the possibility of it being exploited is ‘very far fetched.’ It says that none of the app’s 10 million users have come forward to claim their data has been misused as a result.”
“Still, the company is now working on updating its app with ‘extra layers of protection,'” Olson reports. “In this case, Starbucks had decided on behalf of the consumer that it would ‘prefer convenience over privacy,'” said Tony Anscombe, head of free products at security software firm AVG Technologies.”
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