HTC Sense Privacy Issues Crop Up, But Who’s Surprised?
Looks like BGR’s done some digging and found that things aren’t as they should be on HTC Sense-enabled devices. The privacy concern comes in where HTC’s stock browser captures screengrabs of images at periodic intervals to use on Sense’s bookmark widget.
The files are stored (not forever) in a folder on the phone’s storage device (in the case of the reported device, HTC Droid Incredible’s internal flash memory) and do not get wiped if you do a factory reset. I’m not so sure this is as shocking and surprising as people are making it out to be: we’ve always known that HTC’s custom interface saves these snapshots in a hidden folder somewhere.
What we didn’t know, however, was that it’ll take snapshots of sites that aren’t in your bookmarks. It’s as simple as going in and deleting the folder using one of the file managers found on the Android market, but I can see where privacy becomes an issue. Short term solution? Go and delete that folder or reformat your SD card/phone’s storage if you aren’t feeling safe. Long-term? Just download another browser from the Android market and call it a day.