Verizon iPhone Ad, iWallet, Trapster Disaster

The wait for Verizon iPhone is almost over. In a matter of couple of weeks, die hard iPhone and Verizon wireless fans get to have the best of both worlds. Verizon for its part has released its first iPhone commercial. It features a number of ticking clocks and ends with Verizon thanking its customers for sticking with the company during all this time it has taken it to bring iPhone on board. This first commercial seems to be more about Verizon and its wireless network than iPhone per se. The device’s features and design are not show-cased in it. Verizon has taken a different approach in this ad in comparison to the previous ones by Apple and AT&T.

iPhone 5, which is a few months away, is expected to allow its owners to pay for things using their phone. But iPhone fans won’t have to wait till then to use their iPhone to pay for Coffee. Starbucks will be accepting payments using iPhone or Blackberry phones. All you have to do is download Starbucks’ application, put some money in it, and go to your local Starbucks for some coffee. Mobile payments are the future. iPhone 5 and the next generation Android phones will be that much better in handling them.

While iPhone and iPad are very useful products, they do cause their users headaches and grief from time to time. Apple is not always to blame for these issues. Take Trapster for example. It is an application that can alert iPhone owners about police speed traps. Unfortunately, millions of e-mail addresses and passwords may have been stolen from Trapster, putting its customers in an uncomfortable situation. The company had this to say about this hack attack:

While we know that we experienced a security incident, it is not clear that the hackers successfully captured any e-mail addresses or passwords, and we have nothing to suggest that this information has been used… We are choosing not to provide a specific figure, but a majority of our users who download the app do not register, which means they did not provide an e-mail address, as it is not a requirement. So the figure is well below the 10 million users which has been reported.

App developers need to be even more vigilant when it comes to keeping their customers’ sensitive data secure. This latest episode may be embarrassing for Trapster but is even more inconvenient for those who took time to register their information. Unfortunately, these types of hack attacks won’t be going away anytime soon.