Blackberry Gmail Conspiracy Theory


You heard it here first – Google wants to know who I have been calling on my cell phone! I must be paranoid to think this way, but why is Gmail wanting to collect this information and what are they going to do with it? To make a long story short, I installed the java based mobile Gmail application on my new Blackberry 8800. The Blackberry has a rich set of access control permissions that it enforces on all user installed applications. When I ran the Gmail application for the first time, it asked me for permission to access http connections to Google’s web servers and I granted the application access. The suspicious activity and subsequent prompt to allow access to the phones logs occurs after the phone has set idle for some time. Below you will see the security prompt the phone presents. Now regardless of whether you have black helicopter hovering outside your window or not, this seems highly suspect. What do you think? Leave comments…

The application com_google_gmail_lib is attempting to access phone logs. Would you like to allow access?
Vendor Name:
Google
Application Name:
Gmail
Calling Modules:
net_rim_bbapi_phone
com_google_gmail_lib
net_rim_cldc-4
com_google_gmail_lib
Uncaught exception: net.rim.device.api.system.ControlledAccessException

Update: It appears though this is not nefarious action on Google’s part. They appear to be calling an API that now displays an ominous message on the 8800 (OS 4.2.x).

See the comments on the blog posting at:
http://www.darrenalbers.net/blog/?p=4

GMail is invoking Phone.getActiveCall(), which returns null when there is no call. It’s part of determining when there is likely to be a network connection. (BlackBerrys cannot do voice+data at the same instant)

http://www.blackberry.com/developers/docs/4.2api/net/rim/blackberry/api/phone/Phone.html#getActiveCall()

10 Comments

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10 responses to “Blackberry Gmail Conspiracy Theory

  1. Renny

    This is pretty freaky. There’s a lot of cool stuff to be gained from using all these (and future) “over the top” web services and video — but when stuff like this happens, I get a littls scared.

    What if, when internet TV takes off, they start tracking everything we watch? What are in the YouTube logs?

    – Renny

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  3. Okay – so maybe I was not the first to break this news after all 🙂

    NSF Releases NMI-R9

  4. Bruce Harvey

    Last week’s massive BlackBerry outage attributed to a non-critical cache software optimization change in the server. Server cache is a great place to target or scan traffic between server and all BlackBerrys or particular BlackBerrys (via device id). Perhaps the NSA/FBI actually cused this with/without RIM’s permission? Or a warning demonstration to extract blackmail? RIM is a beautiful target for govt. eavesdropping (akin to digital voice moniotring), terrorism or blackmail.

    Anyone else just a bit puzzled by the late and lame excuse for the outage?

  5. Scott Williams

    I received the following error message on my BB 8800 when Google Maps requested to change the security timeout option.

    Uncaught Exception: Net.Rim.Devise.Api.System.Controlled Access Exception.

    The only way I got this to go away was to DELETE and REINSTALL the application. I reset the firewall permissions to DENY access to the security timeout setting. ALL IS WELL.

  6. Fausto Gherardini

    Hi guys,

    I was just looking for an answer to the “Uncaught exception: net.rim.device.api.system.ControlledAccessException” message I was getting when trying to use ANOTHER message service, namely IM+.

    So I don’t think is a Gmail exclusive thing but definately suspicious in my book

  7. as

    I m also having the same problem. what will i do?
    geting error
    Uncaught Exception:net.rim.device.api.system.ControlledAccessException

  8. Des

    I have had this error occur as well and mine was an OTA activation onto a corporate BES server so it’s definitely not a GMAIL thing.

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  10. eurobuddha

    i get the net.rim.device.api.system.ControlledAccessException error message when attempting to send voice note in palringo. is there a way to change this controlled access??

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