Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Blackberries being viewed as a Security threat by various Middle Eastern governments

The Toronto Star had an interesting article on how Blackberries are seen as a potential security threat by various countries in the Middle East and Asia.

http://www.thestar.com/business/companies/rim/article/840150#article

From the article:
The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said Sunday that as a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored that “certain Blackberry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions.”

This is certainly interesting information and raises the question of what specific applications are of concern to the government. I can imagine Blackberry messenger being one of the applications that causes some concerns from a privacy perspective but I am curious as to what some of the other applications of concern might be.

Just thinking of some possibilities:
Youtube
Twitter
Facebook
Worldmate Live
Maximizer
Cellcrypt - possibly determining who is using this
various news portal applications
viigo
Wi-Fi Proxy FTP HTTP Servers (app)
SSH apps (PaderSyncSSH and Rove Mobile SSH) - possibly determining which non corporate individuals are using apps of this nature?