Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Help bring Aurora Feint back to the app store!!!

Night Spring said:
While it was very misguided of the Aurora developers to do what they did with the contact list, I'm surprised that Apple allowed this functionaity in their SDK. Who knows what other apps could be reading and transmitting our contact info off our phones/touches, but haven't been "caught" yet?
Click to expand...

Precisely.

I don't care how noble the intentions of the creators are, I don't want any software touching my contact list unless I specifically give it permission to do so in a very obvious way.

I really liked the game and didn't use the community feature.

But once I found out how it could operate, I removed it from my phone and computer.
 
CommanderData said:
I think he has NO IDEA how these things work. I can and have sniffed pictures, text of web sites, passwords and e-mail contents over wifi. It is scary that they did not try to encrypt/obfuscate the data in any way.

I really liked the game, but I don't know if I will play anymore. Some people actually keep important business contact info on their phones, and not just speed dials to mom and dad. I don't want my contact list going out EVER, even if it's encrypted for transmission it will be decrypted at their servers.
Click to expand...

No I know plenty of how these things work. If someone wants to sit there and sniff the air for unencrypted data fine! Who's gonna do anything with a bunch of phone numbers that are more or less meaningless to them? Other data, I could see being an issue but A.F isn't transmitting your credit info over the air.

As I said before, when you dial out and the cell sends the tower what you are attempting to do there is no encryption there. It's really not much different, just a different frequency. (Which simply requires a different bit of hardware to 'sniff' it)
 
Big difference between someone using tools to snag info off the air versus someone providing a free game via the App store that gathers contact information.

Whether or not anything is ever sent or if anything is done with that information is entirely beside the point.

I don't want software on my phone that does that.
 
Mindflux said:
No I know plenty of how these things work. If someone wants to sit there and sniff the air for unencrypted data fine! Who's gonna do anything with a bunch of phone numbers that are more or less meaningless to them? Other data, I could see being an issue but A.F isn't transmitting your credit info over the air.

As I said before, when you dial out and the cell sends the tower what you are attempting to do there is no encryption there. It's really not much different, just a different frequency. (Which simply requires a different bit of hardware to 'sniff' it)
Click to expand...

No, you really don't. This isn't 1995 anymore with AMPS cellular where anyone with $100 to drop on a scanner can listen in on your phone calls. GSM in the USA and Europe are encrypted via A5/1 which is reasonably secure considering it requires expensive equipment and a 3 terabyte rainbow table to even begin the attack... And even then this "attack" is more of a proof of concept than a working hack.

Now, compare this with WiFi either open or WEP encrypted. Any teenager with a laptop, cantenna, and even an early alpha build of Wireshark from 5 years ago can pull plaintext data out of the air without even knowing what they're doing. Business contacts are very important to keep secure and confidential. Having my contacts compromised could put me out of work.

I think maybe you'd have a better time wrapping your head around this if you imagined people using a phone to do more than call Mom and Dad for a ride home from Soccer.
 
Dipdip said:
I really wouldn't want anyone other than me to get a hold of my business contacts.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Think of the kind of person who keeps running Wireshark running, they're doing it to be nosy. It's not a stretch of the imagination to then see that same person firing up their Asterisk server and dialing phone numbers at random just to see if there's anything fun in the list of contacts they intercepted. If someone snatched my contacts and then decided to start calling corporate crisis bridges, direct back lines, or operations numbers I've got in my phone for datacenters and executives of the various fortune 500 companies I contract with and it got traced back to me playing a video game I'd get fired, get sued for violating confidentiality agreements, or both.

So... it's really not a joke that the iPhone SDK allows for apps to grab whatever data the developers feel like off your phone and then doing whatever they feel like doing without any prompt. Apple needs to add a warning similar to the location acquisition popup for when an application attempts to pull data from outside of its sandbox.

In the meantime I've removed everything from my work iPhone that aren't from developers I trust.
 
If apple isn't going to allow access to music on the phone (think song summoner from square enix on the ipod.. generates characters from your music library), they shouldn't allow access to your contacts list by non-apple software either.

Contacts are much more personal than your taste in music, yet they clearly allow applications free reign over your contacts list.

I never used the community feature, and according to the developers, your data was never transmitted unless you explicitly used the community feature.
 
I hope the new version also fixes some bugs with the text and level status (my character went down to level 0)

It's a really great game.

Hmm... I wonder if the developer's make it a paid app due to its popularity. I would pay for it if they fixed the bugs.
 
I didn't realize they removed this game from the Apps Store. Could this perhaps have anything to do with why the version on my iPod Touch crashes at launch?
 
Its Back!!

Aurora Feint is back!

App Store Link

Check the time and date on the iCal icon.

aurorfeintback.png
 
Mindflux said:
Yet you'll freely dial your friends numbers right off your phone which goes through AT&T's switchboard ... uh oh! UNENCRYPTED.
Click to expand...

Yeah...there's a big difference between a random phone number and a phone number with lots of information attached to it.

Like say...

714-555-1234

or

Paris Hilton
714-555-1234
600 Beverly Hills Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
paris@me.com

Interesting side note...I had her actual phone number a few years ago. Not the one that was posted online after the T-Mobile leak. The one she got after that. I will never tell how I got it but it worked from a pay phone when I tried it. I actually had it in my contacts list on my old v400 and when I went to upgrade to the Rokr E1, it somehow disappeared when Cingular transferred them over. Ever since then I wondered if there was some weird conspiracy going on. Scary.
 
Aurora Feint update to 1.0.0.1 has popped up on my iphone!!! i'm downloading it now!!!
 
Wow, the new cut scene at the beginning is great.

Damn, battery 10% warning. Horrible timing.
 
macduke said:
Yeah...there's a big difference between a random phone number and a phone number with lots of information attached to it.

Like say...

714-555-1234

or

Paris Hilton
714-555-1234
600 Beverly Hills Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
paris@me.com
Click to expand...

It doesn't send all that to begin with. It sends a name and phone number so you can see your friends playing feint.
 
I am confused. I thought you uploaded your email/phone number (either or) then the game checked the server to see if any of the added emails or phone numbers match ppl in your contacts list. If there is a match then that person plays the game. Why would they upload your whole contact list? That seems dumb and unnecessary.
 
Okay, please forgive me because this post is unrelated to AF's issues with the App Store and such. But I've been completely unable to find any resource talking about how to play the game beyond the obvious stuff of matching three blocks and such. I can't see any differences at all after having leveled up. Like the time-slow thing - how do I actually make use of that? I assume there's some sort of gesture but I don't know of any documentation that talks about it.

Edit - one on-topic note - with access to your contacts list, ANY app has the potential of sending all that information to their servers without your permission. Without looking at the source code, you'll never know it happens. Could potentially lead to increase spam issues if an unscrupulous programmer wants to go that route. It'd be nice if Apple added a Deny/Allow pop-up whenever an app wants to access personal information - not just physical location, but contacts as well.
 
I see it on the store, but it's not being flagged up as an available update.
 
ps - got the update during lunch today. Now the special blocks from leveling up are there. And the text boxes are now the right shape. Inventory screen is a bit different. There are options to reser your character. Probably more items I haven't noticed yet - for a 0.0.1 update, there are quite a few significant changes/improvements. Good job!
 
the update version apparently causes more crashes than the original version it seems after looking at their forum sites. the update doesn't even work for me, crashes on the splash screen
 
diesel said:
AF has been removed from the app store due to the controversy over AF's implementation of the community feature. Admittedly, the developers did a less then stellar job in implementing or at the very least communicating the intent of their community feature and they plan on taking it out i believe, however please help bring it back.

http://aurorafeint.proboards100.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=crash&thread=346&page=1
Click to expand...
'


whats the community feature i have it and dont know what your talkingabout
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back