Posts Tagged ‘cell phones’
5 Terrifying Ways Your Own Gadgets Can Be Used To Spy On You
Thanks to the Bush administration and one Will Smith movie, we all have a fairly justifiable fear of government surveillance. But it turns out you should be just as paranoid about your boss, your overly affectionate uncle and that stuttering blinky guy who lingers by your garbage cans on trash days. Because thanks to modern technology, the details of your life are openly accessible to pretty much anybody who wants them.
Imagine it’s Saturday night and you’re doing your usual Saturday night thing, when your webcam secretly clicks on. And somewhere, somebody starts watching you while you wipe Dorito dusted fingers on your whitey tighties and bob your head to Nickelback. They could be secretly uploading videos of you on to YouTube, taking notes for anthropological purposes or, if you’re lucky, masturbating.
And you’d never even know they’re there.
Wait, What?
By now you’ve almost certainly heard about that high school in Pennsylvania that got in trouble for issuing its students laptops, and then spying on them in their bedrooms, remotely, by controlling their webcams.
We’re going to bet that, before that story broke, you didn’t know there was even such a thing as turning on somebody else’s webcam against their will from across town. And maybe you thought the school had done some weird modification to the laptops, and that it was just an isolated incident by a somewhat insane school district.
Class outside? What the fuck is going on here?
The truth is, it took basically no effort on their part. All sorts of programs are available to let you remotely commandeer a webcam, and many of them are free. Simple versions will just take photos or videos when they detect movement, but more complex software will send you an e-mail when the computer you’ve installed the program on is in use, so you can immediately login and control the webcam without the hassle of having to stare at an empty room until the person you’re stalking shows up. Convenient!
Leaving creeps free time to work on their Harry Potter/Starfox slash fiction.
One of the creepier uses of this technology came back in 2008, when a University of Florida student, who was known for helpfully fixing the computer problems of strangers, not so helpfully installed programs onto some of the computers he repaired so he could use the webcam to capture nude pictures of the girls who owned them.
This is a sad example of what would be hilarious in a wacky college movie being disturbing in real life, and we also have to wonder how someone that proficient with computers was unaware you could find plenty of naked women on the Internet in roughly three seconds.
Let’s say that like most Cracked readers during this recession, you’re a custodian. And your boss gives you a cool cell phone with a clippy thing that you attach to your waist while you’re working, which you assume is so he can phone you when there’s some macaroni vomit you’ve got to take care of. What you wouldn’t assume is that he’s using that cool cell phone to track and log your every custodiony movement.
9:35 a.m. – Retreated into “janitor’s lounge.”
For some companies, it’s not enough to know what sleazy shit you’re totally into on the Internet. What they really want to know is what sleazy shit you’re into at the workplace. For these guys, the logical next step in employee surveillance is using GPS technology to track your every move while you’re on the job.
Wait, What?
Japanese company KDDI has developed technology for cell phones that uses something called accelerometers to track precise movements, then beams all that info back to a central location. And we’re not throwing the word “precise” around willy-nilly here. These guys can tell if whoever wearing the phone is sweeping versus scrubbing, walking versus running, doing number two in the bathroom versus doing number two in the secretary’s filing cabinet. It’s that sophisticated.
And anyone with access to your phone can secretly upload the software. Your mom. Your girlfriend. A grudge-holding, time-traveling Alexander Graham Bell… anyone.
For those of you who think that this would never be used in America, it sort of already is, just in a simpler form. Called geofencing, it’s used by businesses whose employees are constantly on the move, like FedEx drivers. A GPS enabled cell phone with some software installed on it lets bosses know where their drivers are at all times, and they’ll get e-mail alerts if their employees are speeding, loitering or entering “prohibited areas,” like a bar, or cockfighting arenas, or their home, or whatever they feel like labeling as prohibited.
“Get back to work. Those pizzas aren’t going to deliver themselves.”
But, hey, it’s not like they’re listening in on your calls or anything…
If you told us 20 years ago that there would be places where cell phones would be more ubiquitous than toilets, we would have shat our Girbauds and done a spit-take into your mirrored Oakleys. But here we are, in 2010, with just about every schmo carting a cell phone around like it’s no big thing. Hey! You know what else is “no big thing”? Using that same ubiquitous device to to listen to your conversations, read your text messages and monitor your online browsing.
Wait, What?
Companies like Mobile Spy are on the cutting edge of the turning cell phones into secret, psycho nanny devices business. For just about $100, customers can get software that records the phone number and length of every outgoing and incoming call, all text messages sent and received, and the phone’s Internet browsing history. All of that info then gets sent to a database run by the good people behind Mobile Spy, and can be perused by users at their leisure.
“Don’t worry, everybody. She said she’d be right back.”
Fancier programs also let you listen in on and record live phone conversations.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should get all paranoid and start sending all your text messages in Esperanto, but the fact that so many different kinds of software for spying on cell phones exist suggests that there’s a pretty serious market for this sort of thing.
On the plus side, none of these programs can be used unless the perpetrator has access to your phone. On the down side, anyone who does have access to your phone can monitor you like you’re a dissatisfied Soviet dissident and they’re the KGB.
But no untrustworthy person will ever be alone with your phone, right?
Shoe Generator Harvests Electrical Energy From Walking
Photo courtesy of lusi
These shoes were made for walkingand for producing power. A researcher at Louisiana Tech University designed a shoe that contains a small generator in its sole. When the shoe-wearer moves, it generates a piezoelectric charge, which is then converted into electricity for charging batteries or powering small electronics in real time. The designer hopes the shoe can eventually create clean, renewable electricity to charge portable devices like sensors, GPS units and cell phones.
Ville Kaajakari, an electrical engineer, designed the shoe. And while other kinetic energy-harvesting devices exist, Kaajakaris shoe makes use of a new technology. Conventional power-harvesting tech uses ceramic transducers, which are hard and rigid. Kaajakari employed a low-cost, polymer transducer, a soft, flexible material that replaces the shoes heel shock absorber without sacrificing user experience.
The tech is still being perfected, but Kaajakari says he thinks it will be especially useful for folks without access to the grid, like hikers. The device can currently produce enough power to juice sensors, RF transponders and GPS receivers, but the designer hopes to optimize the technology enough to charge products like cell phones.
+ Louisiana Tech University
Via ScienceDaily
Nokia Files Patent For Self-Charging Phone
IntoMobile raves that this “may just be one of the most important documents of this century.”
The patent’s abstract states:
A battery for an electronic device is contained within a first frame that is coupled to a second frame by one or more piezoelectric elements. The second frame is coupled to a device chassis by one or more additional piezoelectric elements. In response to translation and/or rotation of the electronic device, portions of forces induced by the battery mass are transferred to the piezoelectric elements. Electrical energy output by these piezoelectric elements is received in a power controller and can be applied to the battery. Additional device components can also be contained within the first frame so as to increase the total mass that induces forces applied to the piezoelectric elements.
What the patent boils down to, as New Scientist lays out, is Nokia would create a cell phone with heavier components in a strong frame, which would sit two sets of rails, one allows it travel up and down, the other side to side. As the user walks around or jostles the phone, the frame bumps against strips of piezoelectric crystals at the end of each rail and generates a current, which then charges a capacitor that keeps the phone’s battery topped off.
It wouldn’t be a complete solution to keeping batteries charged, but is a way to supplement power enough that needing to charge from an outlet would be reduced – possibly significantly if the user is active enough.
Pointing out that this could be the perfect option for people in developing nations with limited access to electricity, IntoMobile writes, “…imagine people in Africa, India, and other emerging economies using a device that can charge itself as they go about their day. They walk to school, walk to work, walk to the river to fetch water, etc., they don’t need to walk to the man with a car batter strapped to the back of a bicycles, charging for electricity anymore.”
While that’s true, the bulk of energy consumption for devices lays in the developed world, particularly the United States. Off-grid charging options would be more useful here, where coal fired power plants do the dirty work of refilling the hundreds of millions of rapidly depleted smart phone batteries.
A patent like this means the beginning of exploring how kinetic energy can factor into our electronics in a real, tangible way. But it will be a long time before we’re walking around with cell phones that don’t need to be plugged into the wall – or the sun – to power up.
More on Kinetic Power and Cell Phones
Renewably-Powered Cell Phones are Cool, But Realistic?
CES 2010 – YoGen Makes a Splash in Pull-String Charging (Video)
World’s First Mechanical Cell Phone Modeled After Watches
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Source: www.treehugger.com