John Hering, co-founder and chief executive of Lookout
(Credit: James Martin/CNET )SAN FRANCISCO--In July, John Hering and Kevin Mahaffey demonstrated an SMS attack targeting a variety of smartphones at a security show. This week they are launching a company, with backing from some heavyweight investors, that will offer a fix for that problem, as well as protect smartphones from many other security issues.
Lookout has received $5.5 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures, Trilogy Partnership, and angel investors including Phil Paul, founder of Paul Capital Partners; Chris Sacca, former head of special initiatives at Google; and Joseph Ansanelli, former chief executive of Vontu.
Lookout is a cross-platform, Internet-connected application that offers advanced security and backup services, as well as the ability to locate devices that go missing or get stolen, and over-the-air management capabilities. The service is currently in private beta in more than 170 countries across 400 mobile networks, Hering, Lookout's chief executive, said in an interview.
It will be offered publicly on a subscription basis in early 2010 and an enterprise version will come later in 2010 or early 2011, he said. Pricing will be announced later.
Hering, Mahaffey, and the third co-founder, James Burgess, all met while attending the University of Southern California, and have honed their skills in the mobile space over the past five years, initially calling the company Flexilis.
They conducted research, helped handset makers with diagnostic tools, and discovered vulnerabilities in mobile devices and software--including uncovering a serious hole in the iPhone's implementation of Bluetooth in 2007 and hitting a world record by hacking a mobile phone from more than a mile away via Bluetooth in 2004.
With the funding and name change comes a move to San Francisco from Orange County in Southern California. The twentysomething executives were busy interviewing prospective employees in their sparse, new offices in the South of Market area in San Francisco. They have taken over part of the offices formerly occupied by Twitter.
"Hopefully, the Twitter luck will rub off on us," Hering said, as he gave a tour of the digs.
Lookout works on all the major smartphone platforms.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET )The Lookout software is downloaded to the device and gets updates and backs up data in real-time via Lookout servers in the cloud. Antivirus and firewall software protects against electronic threats such as hackers, malware, and spyware. A dashboard allows for easy management of multiple devices.
Security veterans like Symantec and McAfee, as well as a host of smaller companies, are quickly moving into the mobile security space. But Hering isn't worried.
"Other companies offer a more PC-based approach," he said. "We're protecting the device and data, and we're multi-platform."
Lookout silently blocks malware in the background, but particularly serious threats prompt a notification to the user. The software also will protect against bad or unauthorized apps that might be downloaded, and attacks attempted via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
The missing device locator function will most definitely attract attention. If the device is lost, the owner can use the Web app to make it "scream," and a truly obnoxiously loud siren will sound that will annoy everyone within earshot. If the device is set to silent or mute mode, the scream feature overrides that.
For people who think their device may have been stolen and want to track it down, there is a nifty way to trace it via an online map. Device owners can pull up the Find My Device Web app to see the approximate location of the device on a map, and either lock the device so no one can use it or access the data, or wipe the data entirely. If the device is recovered, the data is easily restored. A combination of Global Positioning System, cell tower, and Wi-Fi technology is used to track the devices.
For backup and recovery purposes, the data and settings on the device can be set to what they were at any point of time in the past, and data can be transferred to other devices.
As phones become increasingly powerful computers and storage devices that accompany users everywhere, they become even more attractive targets for attackers and thieves.
"Smartphones are the next computing platform," Hering said. "Ultimately, I think this will be the primary platform. It's in my pocket, and goes everywhere with me. There are not many computing devices that have that power and personal connection."
Chief Technology Officer Kevin Mahaffey and Chief Executive John Hering, co-founders of mobile security firm Lookout, which now occupies the former offices of Twitter in San Francisco.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET )Verizon Wireless is being criticized (again) by customers for its policy of requiring them to opt out or have their information shared with other Verizon-owned businesses.
The company began notifying customers in 2007 that they had 45 days to opt out. David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, received the "small legalistic pamphlet" from Verizon recently and wrote a blog posting on Friday detailing how difficult it was to opt out online, even with customer support help.
"The whole thing sucks," Weinberger concluded.
Verizon posted a note on its public policy blog on Monday that said nothing has changed since the policy was first implemented in 2007 and that no personal information is sold to third parties.
"We are keeping all the data in question in the family--unless you tell us not to," Verizon said in an October 15, 2007, statement that was re-posted on Monday.
I called Verizon and got more information. First off, customers can opt out at any time by calling 1-800-333-9956, said Verizon spokeswoman Debi Lewis.
Secondly, the information shared does not include name, address, and wireless phone number, but includes phone usage, billing information, and location information, she said.
Failing to opt out means a Verizon Wireless customer could receive marketing materials from Verizon Telecom, which is the landline business, or conceivably from Vodafone, a U.K. company that has wireless businesses around the world and which owns a 45 percent stake in Verizon, according to Lewis.
Hypothetically, Lewis said, Verizon Telecom could offer voice-to-text or landline voice-mail services to wireless customers, "services that interact and cross over."
Asked why Vodafone would want data on Verizon Wireless customers in the U.S., Lewis said: "What they do with it, it's hard for me to say."
This is the FAQ from the pamphlet notice to customers about opting out of data sharing with other Verizon businesses. (PDF)
(Credit: Verizon)
Google Latitude shows your friends on a map--as long as they've agreed to share their location.
(Credit: Google)Just because the Internet has broken down geographic barriers, don't assume that Google doesn't care about geography.
The company plans to launch software called Latitude on Wednesday that lets mobile phone users share their location with close contacts. Google hopes it will help people find each other while out and about and to keep track of loved ones.
"What Google Latitude does is allow you to share that location with friends and family members, and likewise be able to see friends and family members' locations," said Steve Lee, product manager for Google Latitude. For example, a girlfriend could use it to see if her boyfriend has arrived at a restaurant and, if not, how far away he is.
To protect privacy, Google specifically requires people to sign up for the service. People can share their precise location, the city they're in, or nothing at all.
"What we found in testing is that the most common scenario is a symmetrical arrangement, where both people are sharing with each other," Lee said.
The software spotlights Google's fixation with mapping and location technology. Location is an important part of navigating the real world, and Google clearly sees its geographic services as a way to establish a more personal connection with customers who today use Google chiefly for the virtual realm of the Internet. And of course money is involved, too: Google hopes its mapping technology will lead to location-based advertising revenue.
Google's power is firmly lodged in search and search advertising, but the company is trying to expand to broader online services, too. That includes online documents and various aspects of social networking, which are much more personal services and ones that put Google into more direct competition with rivals such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo. Like using Google profiles to contact information with select contacts, using Google Latitude tells Google who's who in your social graph.
Latitude lets you contact somebody who's close by.
(Credit: Google)
How it works
Latitude is part of Google Maps for Mobile, the company's mapping software for mobile phones, but also can be used through a gadget loaded onto its iGoogle customized home page. It'll work in 27 countries at launch, Google said.
Initially, it will work on most color-screen BlackBerry phones, most phones with Windows Mobile 5.0 or later, and most Symbian-based devices such as Nokia smartphones. An update to the Google Android operating system now being distributed to the T-Mobile G1 phone also enables it, and iPhone and iPod Touch users will get the option "very soon," Lee said.
Latitude uses Google's technology to judge a user's location not just by GPS satellite, but also by proximity to mobile phone towers and wireless networks.
That's a much more automated approach than the manual "check-in" process used by Dodgeball, a service that Google decided in January to shut down.
Other competitors exist, though. BrightKite and Loopt offer mechanisms for people to find each other by mobile phone, for example. Then there's MobiFriends, Tripit, and Dopplr.
And Google's clearest competitor, Yahoo, offers some competition with Fire Eagle. That service doesn't provide location information, but it does provide a mechanism to centralize people's geographic privacy choices, in effect taking care of some of the social graph management when it comes to location information.
To use the service, you need a Google account to record who has permission to see your location. For choosing who gets to see your location, you can use contacts stored with Gmail or Picasa, Google said.
The white lie
With the service, you can hide from specific people or disappear altogether. And you can manually set a specific location if, for example, your phone can't show it with sufficient precision or if you wish to tell someone a white lie about whether you really aren't going to go to the candy store.
People must agree to share their location before Latitude will work.
(Credit: Google)Google envisions two broad classes of people with whom you might want to share location information. First is a small, close-knit circle of friends and family with whom you're willing to share your exact spot. Second is a larger group with whom you're happy to share city-level detail, convenient for finding out when somebody's in town but not much more.
When somebody is close, the software lets you contact the person various ways--by calling or sending an e-mail or text message, for example. It also lets you hide from that specific person.
Privacy is of course a significant concern when it comes to sharing this sort of information. If you want to use Latitude, you must specifically enable the service.
Meeting your pals at a bar is an obvious example of the software's possibilities, but there are softer cases I see as useful, too.
Lee pointed to a case where a friend's girlfriend, though far away in Seattle, will "virtually place herself next to him." That sounds a little sappy for my tastes, but I can still relate. My wife is on the other side of the country right now, and it would be heart-warming to see just where. There are a lot of occasions where technology is better for maintaining relationships than it is for establishing them, and this looks like one to me.
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