Got a small pile of unwanted electronics that have been replaced by new models and gadgets in your life?

If you opt to get rid of them, you could be making one or more cybercriminals very happy.

Although the average mobile user retains their newest phone for at least twelve months, 90% of the phones sold in the last 25 years are still in circulation, if not in service.

This reality means that when secondhand devices fall into the wrong hands, sensitive information that you thought was erased can be restored and used against you.

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As Mobile Marketing Watch has covered consistently in recent months, late last year the Carrier IQ scandal sent mobile privacy advocates and smartphone users into a frenzy.

The Carrier IQ software is what’s known as a rootkit that is installed at a carrier’s request on mobile phones. Carrier IQ raises user privacy concerns because it runs in the background and monitors and logs user activity.

Before carrier and handset makers began backing away from it, Carrier IQ was believed to have been installed on more than 100 million devices around the world.

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On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission today issued a staff report that could be of great concern to many parents who have children with acecss to mobile phone applications.

The survey shows that neither the app stores nor the app developers provide the information parents need to determine what data is being collected from their children, how it is being shared, or who will have access to it.

“At the FTC, one of our highest priorities is protecting children’s privacy, and parents deserve the tools to help them do that,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “Companies that operate in the mobile marketplace provide great benefits, but they must step up to the plate and provide easily accessible, basic information, so that parents can make informed decisions about the apps their kids use. Right now, it is almost impossible to figure out which apps collect data and what they do with it. The kids app ecosystem needs to wake up, and we want to work collaboratively with industry to help ensure parents have the information they need.”

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According to an eye-opening new report from the Wall Street Journal, Google used special code as a means to work around user privacy settings established by millions of iPhone owners and desktop users running Safari.

The Wall Street Journal revealed that Google used code that “tricks” Safari into letting the search giant monitor user behaviors. This code essentially circumvents Safari’s default security settings which restrict such tracking.

The Google code was spotted by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer and independently confirmed by a technical adviser to the Journal, Ashkan Soltani, who found that ads on 22 of the top 100 websites installed the Google tracking code on a test computer, and ads on 23 sites installed it on an iPhone browser.

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This week, faced with mounting calls for action from U.S. legislators, Apple is doing its part to bolster mobile privacy by requiring iPhone and iPad apps to seek “explicit approval” via more than one user prompt before accessing users’ address book data.

Lawmakers urged Apple to act following a series of findings which indicated that some popular iOS applications “have been able to lift private address book data without user consent.”

Path, a Facebook-style social networking app, for example, was recently discovered to be uploading users’ contact names and phone numbers onto Path’s servers.

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As Mobile Marketing Watch reported Tuesday, word recently surfaced that Google’s mobile wallet commerce platform is vulnerable to potential criminal attacks from hackers who have figured out how to gain access to the Google prepaid card already linked to a user’s smartphone. The discovery was of such grave and immediate concern that over the weekend a Google representative “strongly encouraged” anyone who “loses or wants to sell their phone to first call Google Wallet support to disable the prepaid card.”

On Monday, Google temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards. “We took this step,” Google said, “as a precaution until we issue a permanent fix soon.“

Well, this morning, Google fans awakened to the news that the Internet search giant has restored prepaid card provisioning capabilities to the mobile payments platform. How come? Google says it has successfully addressed the underlying vulnerability and hack attacks can now be successfully averted.

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Google has been plagued by recent headlines and user complaints regarding the safety of Google’s NFC-enabled mobile wallet solution for smartphones.

Last week, word surfaced that Google’s mobile wallet commerce platform is vulnerable to potential criminal attacks from hackers who have figured out how to gain access to the Google prepaid card already linked to a user’s smartphone.

The discovery was of such grave and immediate concern that over the weekend a Google representative “strongly encouraged” anyone who “loses or wants to sell their phone to first call Google Wallet support to disable the prepaid card.”

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