Whoopsy Daisy
AT&T apologizes for releasing iPad owner information, but is being sorry enoughfor Apple anymore?
Can you hear that loud whooshing sound? It's Steve Jobs, breathing what's most likely another premature sigh of relief.
Perhaps you wouldn't expect such a reaction in a week like this one, when the iPhone pre-order process tanked at best. But with the iPhone deflectors engaged, the spotlight is no longer hovering above the guilty head of the iPad.
On Sunday, AT&T, in cahoots with Apple's iPad, admitted to committing the ultimate cyber sin — failing to protect its customers from malicious hacking and spam marketing. Specifically, the e-mail addresses of the loyal iPad infantry — 114,000 strong — were released into the wild. And the identification necessary to authenticate subscribers on AT&T's network, called the ICC-ID, made it to greedy hacker hands as well.
Without permission, but of course.
In a ridiculously digital jargon-heavy e-mail from Dorothy Attwood, Senior Vice President of Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T, explanations and apologies were hurled left and right, hoping they'd stick and patch up the holes created by the leak. "AT&T acted quickly to protect your information — and we promise to keeping working around the clock to keep your information safe," Attwood wrote.
But will hasty apologies and empty promises suffice here?
According to Gawker, despite the fact that AT&T's servers bore the brunt of the vulnerability, Apple isn't off the hook for user privacy. Providing Apple with your e-mail address to activate an iPad is part of the deal, and Apple won't escape the blame on account of AT&T's blunder.
Unfortunately, this isn't the first of the Apple security hemorrhaging you've seen, and with reports of breaches in the ordering process of the iPhone 4, it certainly won't be the last. But exactly what kind of tourniquet will stop the Apple bleeding?
