The iPhone 4 pre-order was made available today. Were you able to get one?
If you were like me you went to the Apple website and tried… and tried… and tried, only to receive the “Your request couldn’t be processed.” The Apple’s online pre-order system used an eligibility check for existing AT&T customers, which appears to have been the cause of the issue. Additional problems arose for users who attempted to pre-order using the Apple retail store software from the App Store and found the software hung up at a “processing” screen while checking eligibility for their upgrade.
Even with all of the “processing” issues, the pre-orders for the iPhone 4 stopped from the AT&T website as of around 1:30pm Pacific from the AT&T website. So I guess in between all of the problems there were people that were able to get their hold on the prized iPhone 4.
As if the problems of today is not bad enough rumors have been circulated that a potential AT&T security breach worse than the one encountered days before with the iPad 3G email addresses being leaked. AT&T reports it has been unable to reproduce the issue but users are reporting that they are logging into their AT&T accounts only to find out they are looking at someone else’s account information. Talk about a case of “when it rains, it pours.”
The AT&T iPad 3G security breach has been all over the news. The gist of the story is that a group known as Goatse Security, obtained the data by running a script on the AT&T website. The script would supply an iPad 3G SIM card serial number and would return the email address of the owner. Upon signup for 3G service on the iPad an email address must be entered. When an iPad owner would check for their data usage, the iPad SIM card serial number would be sent to the AT&T website and the email address would be returned and would pre-populate the email address field so the password would be the only thing necessary to enter. AT&T has removed this convenience and have closed the security breach.
It is unfortunate that the security breach was done at all. However, the estimated 114,000 3G owners’ email addresses and SIM serial numbers are out there.
So how is this information going to be used? Should anyone care?
I think answering this question is not going to be easy. Privacy is a hot topic, especially these days. The WSJ is reporting that the FBI has opened up an investigation into this security breach. I guess only time will tell.
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