Xoom follow up report (security)

Posted by Greybeard on Jan 3rd, 2012 in Technology and Music | 0 comments

First off,  I -did- recover in time for New Years Eve.   I was  a bit tired,  but a good time was had.

Next up the “ongoing adventures of the Xoom”,  (my wife’s new android tablet).   Her favorite game was called “Words with Friends”,  I say “was” because it no longer runs on the Xoom.  After  a few hours of research,  I found out that Zynga,  the maker of the game,  no longer supports Android O.S.’s beyond version 2.6 .    Since we’re running the latest O.S.  version 3.2,   it’s likely that that’s part of the cause of the problem.

You see,  Zynga,  is an Apple vendor,  and their versions of their games that run on Android,  are ports of the apple products.  (and evidently not very good ports).  It’s odd that the game ran well on her Xoom for the first month or so that she had it,  then suddenly will not even start up without throwing a “Forced Close” error.   It’s not so odd,  that this issue started right after an automatic update of the game.

I can understand why Zynga would decide not to support a device in the future,  but not why they would push out an update that would kill existing/working games on those devices?

Anyway,  I found her a new wordgame to play “Word Feud Free”.  It seems to work fine, across many platforms including all Android O.S.’s.

Up til now I haven’t spent a lot of time on the Xoom,  but I did have my email on it and had the Xoom sync’ing my email.  I found it pretty convenient,  but as I learned while researching the game problems,  convenience at a very high cost.    The thing that really set off flags is;   After the game was installed,  but not running,  it was still accessing my email.   When using the Xoom for unrelated functions,  a window would pop up stating that “Words with Friends” has experienced a “Forced Close”.  To me indicating that it’s doing something hidden,  when ever it’s installed on the machine.

Well this really got me going,  so I started monitoring my firewall  and router logs.   It seems that most, if not all of the games  on her Xoom operate much the same way.   And many have access to her email account,  FULL access!   Current Bottom Line:  I’ve scoured the Xoom of my personal email accounts,  and we don’t use the Xoom for any financial transactions,  nor enter any private info on it.  (new nickname for the Xoom = Chatty Cathy)

With various Anti-Virus and security company’s announcing that the hot new targets for hackers  are phones and tablets,  I’m a little worried about those who do their banking on their phone or tablet.