iPhone news, reviews and how-to's since 2007
Update: The SMS Preview privacy issue is now resolved as of the iPhone 3.0 software update.
SMS Preview — the iPhone feature that interrupts what you’re doing to display an excerpt of an incoming text message on your screen — has been a privacy concern of mine since the iPhone was released last June. Now RiP Dev, a third-party development team, has released a solution.
Update: The SMS Preview privacy issue is now resolved as of the iPhone 3.0 software update.
In my iPhone review last June, I pointed out a big privacy concern I had about iPhone’s SMS application: namely, the inability to turn off SMS Preview, which interrupts whatever you’re doing when you receive a text message and displays an excerpt of the message content on your screen.
As you can imagine, this can create an awkward situation when you receive a private text message and someone else is using your iPhone.
Update: Has Safari stopped crashing?
At times when I’m surfing the web on iPhone’s Safari browser, it crashes and takes me back to the home screen. Safari hasn’t crashed as frequently on my new replacement iPhone compared to my old one, but the fact that it has happened on both makes me wonder how widespread the problem is.
Update: The SMS Preview privacy issue is now resolved as of the iPhone 3.0 software update.
In my original iPhone review, I complained about having little privacy on the iPhone when receiving incoming text messages.
When you receive an SMS message on your iPhone, a preview of the message content pops up on the screen, and you can choose to either view it or ignore it. While this “SMS Preview” feature may be very convenient, it could be troublesome if a friend or family member is playing with your cool new gadget and a message you’d rather have remained private pops up on your screen — ouch!
iPhone’s web dialing feature — that is, the ability to tap a phone number from within the Safari browser in order to call it — poses a potential security problem, warned research firm SPI Labs.
In a blog post from the SPI Laboratory, one researcher said iPhone’s web dialing feature could “be exploited by attackers to perform various attacks,” including:
Christian Science Monitor commentator Peter S. Magnusson makes a good point about Steve Jobs failing to grasp Web 2.0 and social networking.
Jobs “does not understand the 21st-century user,” he argues.