When I reached Color spokesman John Kuch, he answered with Color’s usual line on privacy: That it has never claimed to offer any. “It is all public, and we’ve been very clear about that from the very beginning. Within the app, there’s already functionality to look through the entire social graph. Very few people will probably do what you’re saying, but all the pictures, all the comments, all the videos are out there for the public to see.”
(A relevant aside: As my privacy-focused colleague Kashmir Hill points out, that’s me and her in the image used on Color’s homepage and in the app store. No one ever asked our permission to use the photo. Not much of a privacy violation there, given that we were doing an early test of the app with Color’s execs, but a funny example of how Color thinks–or doesn’t–about privacy.)
Color does, of course make everything public. But to access someone’s photos, a user generally has to be in the same geographic vicinity as another user, or cross paths with someone else who is connected to that user. With Wysopal’s trick, we can all start looking at Bill Nguyen’s photos immediately.
via The Firewall – Color App Hack Lets You Spy On Anyone’s Photos Anywhere. Bah privacy, what an overrated concept. Admittedly the process to spy on someone’s photos isn’t the easiest for anyone, using a jailbroken iPhone and faking your geolocation, still it’s an issue. Also the idea of just because you’re near someone doesn’t mean you are part of their social circle in any meaningful way.