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from the look-for-people-in-trench-coats dept.
The BBC reports on a woman who was sent pictures of a penis via Apple AirDrop.
The victim received two pictures of an unknown man's penis on her phone via Apple's Airdrop sharing function.
Lorraine Crighton-Smith, 34, said she felt "violated" and reported it to the British Transport Police (BTP).
Supt Gill Murray said this particular crime was new to her force and urged people to report any other incidents.
Ms Crighton-Smith, who was travelling on a train in south London, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme: "I had Airdrop switched on because I had been using it previously to send photos to another iPhone user - and a picture appeared on the screen of a man's penis, which I was quite shocked by.
The article later describes how to make sure that AirDrop is set to only allow pictured from known contacts.
Is this a major privacy issue or is it simply a case of a misconfigured device?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedBear on Tuesday August 18 2015, @06:09PM
First off, iOS devices are configured to accept everything sent via AirDrop by default, if AirDrop is enabled at all. Which I believe it is, by default, if you have Bluetooth enabled. Which again, is normally enabled by default, so that the user can use features like AirDrop and Handoff. So the "blame" for being able to receive an unwanted missive would be partially on Apple and only partially on the user of the device (if you have any reasonable expectations about how well-informed a typical user is about their device's capabilities). But that still leaves the sender who decided what image to send and then deliberately sent it. Only the sender knows if they deliberately targeted her device or just sent the image to whoever was in range. How about we pick today as the one day this year when you don't engage in victim blaming? I know it's counter to human instinct, but give it a try.
Second, exposing oneself in public or showing whatever is locally classified as obscene or adult material in public view is all classified as criminal behavior in many jurisdictions. If it were shown to a juvenile below the age of consent it would also be a sex crime against an underage victim in most jurisdictions. How anyone is confused by this concept I'm not sure.
Did I say that I agree that such things should necessarily be criminal offenses? Don't make assumptions.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @07:54PM
While I largely agree with what you have said, I want to point out that even if this were not a criminal offense any guy doing this has issues that need to be addressed, most likely in a professional clinical environment.