<story><title>Sex toy company Lovense admits its Android app locally stored audio recordings</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16634442/lovense-sex-toy-spy-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>justboxing</author><text>Normally I&amp;#x27;d call BS on a Company calling unauthorized collection of data a &amp;#x27;minor&amp;#x27; bug, but in this particular case, it seems likely that this is the case.&lt;p&gt;I say this because -- according to the company&amp;#x27;s official response[1] -- the recordings were only created on the Android version and not the iOS version of their app.&lt;p&gt;They also state that the recording is only cached locally on the phone and not uploaded to their servers.&lt;p&gt;Leads me to think that it&amp;#x27;s very likely their Android app programmer(s) wrote some test code to save the file, and forgot to delete it or conditionally hide it in their release version of the App. There&amp;#x27;s no excuse for the sloppy programmer(s) if this was the case, I&amp;#x27;m just saying the &amp;#x27;bug&amp;#x27; angle is a possibility, because the Company has also been very quick to fix it and release an updated version for the Andriod app.&lt;p&gt;One more thing, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call something like this a &amp;#x27;minor&amp;#x27; bug. Likely their PR team threw that word in.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Source: Lovense&amp;#x27;s official account on Reddit: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;sex&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7bmi3i&amp;#x2F;psa_lovense_remote_control_vibrator_app_recording&amp;#x2F;dpm4050&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;sex&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7bmi3i&amp;#x2F;psa_lovense_rem...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GuB-42</author><text>Hanlon&amp;#x27;s Razor : Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.&lt;p&gt;I think it totally applies here.&lt;p&gt;Not removing temporary files is a very common bug. As a developer, I&amp;#x27;ve encountered it several times, sometimes I caused it, sometimes I fixed it, and I&amp;#x27;ve seen it happen in other people software just as often. This is one of the reason I hate temporary files, they just don&amp;#x27;t wan&amp;#x27;t to be temporary.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sex toy company Lovense admits its Android app locally stored audio recordings</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16634442/lovense-sex-toy-spy-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>justboxing</author><text>Normally I&amp;#x27;d call BS on a Company calling unauthorized collection of data a &amp;#x27;minor&amp;#x27; bug, but in this particular case, it seems likely that this is the case.&lt;p&gt;I say this because -- according to the company&amp;#x27;s official response[1] -- the recordings were only created on the Android version and not the iOS version of their app.&lt;p&gt;They also state that the recording is only cached locally on the phone and not uploaded to their servers.&lt;p&gt;Leads me to think that it&amp;#x27;s very likely their Android app programmer(s) wrote some test code to save the file, and forgot to delete it or conditionally hide it in their release version of the App. There&amp;#x27;s no excuse for the sloppy programmer(s) if this was the case, I&amp;#x27;m just saying the &amp;#x27;bug&amp;#x27; angle is a possibility, because the Company has also been very quick to fix it and release an updated version for the Andriod app.&lt;p&gt;One more thing, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call something like this a &amp;#x27;minor&amp;#x27; bug. Likely their PR team threw that word in.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Source: Lovense&amp;#x27;s official account on Reddit: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;sex&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7bmi3i&amp;#x2F;psa_lovense_remote_control_vibrator_app_recording&amp;#x2F;dpm4050&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;sex&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7bmi3i&amp;#x2F;psa_lovense_rem...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>loceng</author><text>In the technical sense it sounds like a minor bug in, in the other implications not so minor - perhaps another mistake on their part of not being more clear with language.</text></comment>