These settlements reinforce statements made by the FTC earlier this year concerning its scrutiny of marketing and privacy practices associated with mobile apps. In August 2011, the FTC announced a settlement with W3 Innovations over alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), and, in September, the FTC announced a settlement with a marketer that claimed its mobile apps treated acne. This case marks the FTC’s third action against a mobile app developer in the past 60 days. The Commission also alleged that consumers who installed certain versions of the Frostwire Desktop app onto their computer were led to believe that files downloaded from the Gnutella network would not be shared unknowingly with other users of the P2P network. According to the FTC Complaint, Frostwire configured the default settings on its Frostwire for the Android app so that, immediately upon installation, the app would publicly share personal files that were stored on the app users’ mobile device. Both apps enable users to share files ― including photos, videos, documents, and music ― with other users of the Gnutella P2P file-sharing network. Going forward, a violation of the settlement could expose the company and its Principal to up to $16,000 per violation.įrostwire offers two free P2P file-sharing applications, including Frostwire Desktop for desktop and laptop computers, and Frostwire for Android for mobile devices that use Google’s Android operating system. The settlement also requires that Frostwire provide users with clear and prominent disclosures that include information on how to disable the apps’ file-sharing features. The 20-year settlement bars Frostwire and its Principal from making material misrepresentations about the file-sharing features of its apps, and from configuring its apps to cause inadvertent public sharing of users’ files. The FTC claimed that Frostwire’s alleged actions were unfair and deceptive and violated the FTC Act. ![]() To validate the results and Grep expression, we repeated the previous steps with different media types and search terms.On October 11, 2011, the FTC announced a settlement with Frostwire LLC, a peer-to-peer (“P2P”) file-sharing application (“app”) developer, and its Principal, over charges that the company publicly exposed its app users’ personal information without the users’ authorization, and misled users about the extent to which downloaded files would be shared with a P2P file-sharing network. These other terms ranged from names of textbooks to TV shows. We incorporated the result into an EnScript that would automatically run the Grep expression, parse the results and populate a table that would show the search term and the number of results FrostWire returned to the user.ĭuring our examination, we noticed that terms we did not search for were also stored in the virtual machine’s memory. Then we developed a Grep expression that would find hits that would match the pattern of a search term. Using EnCase’s built in RawSearch Tool, we searched for the same terms we searched for within FrostWire. Because of this, we decided to take an image of the virtual machine’s memory using FTKimager 3.4.2.2 and loaded that into EnCase. Finally, we loaded the virtual machine’s hard drive into EnCase 8.04 and began the forensic examination.Īfter some time, we still could not find the correct expression to locate user entered search terms on the hard drive. ![]() While using a VPN, we then conducted searches and downloads. ![]() We began by installing a fresh copy of Windows 10 build 15063 on a virtual machine (using VMware Workstation Pro v. Our task was to find which term a specific user searched for, given access to their device. It is infamously known for the sharing and downloading of illegal and pirated content. It is a fork of LimeWire (which was shut down after losing a legal battle with the music industry) and supports the Gnutella network. ![]() FrostWire is a popular peer to peer (P2P) file sharing service.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |