Malicious Tor Browser Persists in iOS App Store for Months Despite Protests [iOS Blog]

Developers working on the Tor anonymity service asked Apple months ago to remove a malicious Tor browser that poses a threat to its users from the App Store (via Ars Technica). After receiving no action through official channels, Tor project members now are using more public means to get this app removed.

A report ticket published three months ago by volunteer Phobos details the issue with rogue app.

"Tor Browser in the Apple App Store is fake. It's full of adware and spyware. Two users have called to complain. We should have it removed."

Tor officials confirmed they filed a complaint with Apple in December 2013 and received a response that the app developer was allowed to defend his app from these accusations.

Several followup emails were sent to Apple, but there was no response from the Cupertino company. Twelve weeks later and the app remains in the App Store, prompting the team to step up their campaign to get the app removed.

"I think naming and shaming is now in order. Apple has been putting users at risk for months now," writes lunar

"I mailed Window Snyder and Jon Callas to see if they can get us past the bureaucracy.

Otherwise I guess plan C is to get high-profile people on Twitter to ask Apple why it likes harming people who care about privacy. (I hope plan B works.)," writes arma.

Apple's App Store is known for being a walled garden where apps are vetted before they are allowed entry into the App Store. The process is not flawless, though, with researchers from Georgia Tech last year showing how an innocuous app with hidden malware-type code could slip through Apple's app approval system.

Once a malicious app is identified in the App Store, Apple has in the past taken steps to remove the app, but the exact process by which an app is removed is not known. In an earlier example, Apple quickly pulled a Russian SMS app that quietly scraped address book contacts and sent them to the developer's server.

Update 8:26 PM: Tor Browser has been removed from the App Store.

Pebble Smartwatch Sales Climb to 400,000 Units, Revenue to Double in 2014 [iOS Blog]

Pebble launched its smartwatch Kickstarter campaign in 2012 and started shipping the device early last year. Since January 2013, the company has sold over 400,000 smartwatch units, earning Pebble an estimated $60 million in revenue, reports Fortune, which spoke to Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky.

Pebble as a company has grown significantly in the intervening years, becoming profitable in early 2013 and almost doubling its workforce from 45 up to 70 this year. Revenue also is expected to double year over year in 2014.

"When we started working on wearables six years ago, there were few players in the space and a lot of skeptics," says Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky of Google's news. "It's exciting to see this market grow so quickly -- enabling more interesting use cases and keeping all of us laser-focused on creating the very best user experiences we can."

As the company matures, Pebble's ecosystem is experiencing its own expansion. The company recently rolled out an Appstore for its smartwatch and has over 1,000 apps in its library, with 12,000 registered developers ready to add more titles in the future.

As for Pebble's next steps, Migicovsky is not concerned about Google's recent Android Wear announcement and the unveiling of Motorola's Android-based Moto 360 smartwatch.

For now, Migicovsky is more worried about making his products better than Google shaking up the market. He's exploring technologies that could help boost Pebble's week-long battery life further and keeping tabs on newer screen displays, particularly ones made from flexible materials.

Besides adding an Appstore, Pebble also recently started selling a new version of the smartwatch. The $249 Pebble Steel features a stainless steel body with a leather or steel band and a face covered with durable and scratch resistant Gorilla Glass material.

Apple also is expected to enter the wearables market in 2014 with its iWatch product. Recent rumors suggest the device will focus on fitness with support for heart rate measurement, step count and more. The device may pair with Apple's Healthbook app, a Passbook-inspired wellness app that could debut alongside iOS 8. The iWatch may also include Siri and mapping functionality.

Pinterest Adds Support For “Do Not Track” As It Begins To Personalize Its Service For Users

Pinterest announced today that it will add support for Do Not Track, the web browser mechanism that allows users to opt-out of having their personal data and activity collected by websites and third parties. It's not the first social media company to make this move - Twitter, for example, announced last year that it would also support the Do Not Track technology.

Do Not Track, for those unfamiliar, is similar in spirit to the Do Not Call registry, in that it allows consumers to state their preferences - in this case, that they do not want to have their website browsing activity tracked or personal data collected. The technology blocks cookies that collect that personal information, and specifically, the cookies left on users' computers and devices by third parties for the purposes of advertising. However, Do Not Track to work requires cooperation between browser makers, website publishers, and developers to implement.

While the major browser makers have gotten on board, there are still only a small number of websites that support Do Not Track. And until today, Twitter was the only other social network to have made that commitment.

Explains Pinterest in a statement, "consensus around the technical specs for Do Not Track remain elusive. However, we believe people are making a choice when they turn on Do Not Track. Today, we're committing to respecting that choice."

Pinterest users will now be able to turn the feature on or off from their account Settings page at any time, the company says.

Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Senior Staff Technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), says that Pinterest and Twitter are both supporting Do Not Track in similar ways: by either a browser signal or a preference set by the site itself. His organization is focused on improving consumer choice and privacy options, and hopes that Pinterest's move will lead to more companies doing the same.

Why Support "Do Not Track" Now? Because Pinterest Is Getting More Personalized

Pinterest's announcement about its support for Do Not Track comes at a time when the service is interested in better analyzing user activity in order to introduce more personalized features. For example, the company announced today that it's also adding a new "Edit Your Home Feed" button on web and mobile that will make it easier to follow or unfollow boards. When you go in to edit your feed, you'll be shown personalized pin and board suggestions based on things you've already been pinning on the service.

So, for example, if you pin a lot of vegetarian recipes, the company explains to us, you'll then be shown other popular boards that have similar content. In addition, the company will also soon introduce recommendations for boards based on the sites you visit with the "Pin It" button - something that's similar to what other companies, including Twitter, do to personalize their own experiences.

By adding support for Do Not Track just as the company begins to dig further into user data, Pinterest is at least giving its users a choice in whether or not their data is collected, and it's one of only a few sites to really do so.

However, Do Not Track is a technology and proposal that's currently being debated by the industry, with those companies dependent on ad revenue, like Yahoo, TechCrunch parent AOL, and others, fighting with browser makers on how the push toward a Do Not Track standard should proceed. As the CDT explains it, a lot of the debate centers around whether DNT should mean "do not collect" data, "do not target" users, or whether it should mean "practice good data hygiene." (In Pinterest's case, it's the former, which is what DNT means today).

The interesting thing about Pinterest's implementation of DNT is that it will eventually change what the end-user experience is for those who do or do not enable the setting. For those who permit Pinterest to personalize the site, they'll have an improved way to discover new content, pinners, pins, and boards they may like. But for those who opt out of tracking, personalized boards will not be shown, which means those users' Pinterest experiences will remain basically unchanged.

Given that Pinterest's discovery mechanisms today include a basic category list, search box, and "find friends" functionality, regular users have likely been looking forward to the introduction of new features that would allow them to better explore more of Pinterest.

But now, those users will have to make a choice about whether or not their privacy - or their personalizations - are the most important thing to them.

A First Look At Younity, The App That Lets You Access All Your Files All The Time

I went on a vacation to Iceland earlier this year, and took a ton of photos - it's a beautiful country, and the light there is really unique. But to date, I haven't showed them off to anyone. That's because my Iceland photos are on my home computer's hard drive, and I've been too busy (or lazy) to upload them all to the web. So when friends and family ask, "How was Iceland?" my response is, "Amazing. Someday I'll get around to uploading those damn pictures."

But a new app called Younity could make situations like that a thing of the past. Younity, which is in the current class of Los Angeles-based startup accelerator MuckerLab, purportedly creates a "personal cloud" for the files shared on all of your various devices to let you access them anytime, anywhere.

I met Younity co-founder Erik Caso while we were in L.A. visiting MuckerLab earlier this month, and his pitch was quite interesting - from the looks of it, I'd be able to access those Iceland photos that are on my home computer from my phone in a snap (that is, if I had an iPhone.) Essentially, it makes the experience of the cloud come to you, rather than the other way around.

It's still the early days for the Younity app, but it looks promising, and it'll be exciting to see how it develops in the months ahead. Check out our brief interview with Caso and introduction to Younity in the video above.

Come Hack At The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon - Tickets Now Available!

Hey, you! On the computer! You want fame? You want glory? You want more free pizza than any human should consume in a single night? Come build with us.

We like to start off each of our conferences with a 24-hour hackathon, and we're continuing that tradition at Disrupt SF in September. It's going to be crazy.

I know, I know - of course we'd say our event is going to be crazy. But seriously: We've had people build everything from zombie-centric music games to knife-wielding robots. We've had hackathon projects spin out into full-fledged companies, raise funds, and get acquired for millions of dollars.

Here's what you need to know:

• As long as you're building something, participating is free. Interested sponsors, give us a shout.
• After 24 hours of building, hackers present their projects to their peers and a panel of all-star judges (we'll announce those judges in an upcoming post).
• Every hacker who finishes their project and presents on stage gets a free pass to the entire conference, normally valued at around $2,000. Why? Because you're awesome and we love you.
• The team behind the best hack of the day takes home a cool $5,000, and the top three teams all get to present their projects to the Disrupt audience. There will also be a bunch of prizes awarded by the Hackathon sponsors - more news on those in a few days.

The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon runs September 7 and 8, and we've just released the very first batch of tickets. What are you waiting for?

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.

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Online event registration for Hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt SF: Sept 7 - 8, 2013 powered by Eventbrite

This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Nexus 7, Cheap iPhone 4s, And Chromecast

Does the high-res Nexus 7 beat out the iPad mini? Why has Apple's average selling price gone down? Is Google's new Chromecast dongle an Apple TV/Airplay killer?

We discuss all this and more on this week's TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast. The show features John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Chris Velazco, Darrell Etherington, and Romain Dillet. Packed house, I know.

So sit back, relax, and listen to us make fun of each other while discussing this week's developments in gadgetry.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

After Losing Nearly Half Its Users In A Year, Investors Dock Zynga's Valuation By $400 Million

It is not a good day to be Zynga, or one of its investors if you held stock in the firm yesterday. Following a decidedly negative earnings report, investors have unloaded the firm's shares, sending them down around 15 percent in regular trading.

That loss comes after Zynga's stock price rose in the wake of a very strong quarterly performance by Facebook. Investors had hoped that the strength of Facebook's earnings indicated that Zynga, too, would have reported a good set of financial and user-based metrics.

It was perhaps a decent gambit, but it was utterly wrong. A small picture of the company's decline: Zynga's daily active user count for the quarter totaled 39 million. However, in the preceding sequential quarter, Zynga had 52 million daily active users. A year ago, that figure was 72 million.

Revenue, to cite another statistic, was down by more than $100 million to $231 million. Zynga is a company in steep decline.

And the market docked its allowance. Comparing yesterday's closing price of $3.50, Zynga's current price of $3 is a just over a 14 percent decline. In dollar terms, Zynga today shed around $400 million of market capitalization. As you will recall, this is not the first time that Zynga has suffered from this sort of gut punch to its stock price.

This is not Zynga's lowest point. The company's 52 week low rests at $2.01 per share, at which point Zynga was worth less than $2 billion. Zynga's stock peaked in March 2012 at a price of $14.69. At current tip, Zynga's stock has declined around 80 percent since its all-time high.

Whether Zynga can pull out of its current slide is an open question. Its CEO change provided a large bump in its market valuation, sending the worth of Zynga up $300 million. Quickly, those gains have been erased, and more.

Zynga reported $1.53 billion in cash and marketable securities. The market is therefore valuing Zynga, post cash, at under $1 billion. Zing? Guh.

Top Image Credit: Ben Watts