Mobile World News

Harri Salminen, the CTO of Widian, reports news from the mobile world in a tight package. The topics here include Widian Mobile 3.0 and the infamous “Nokiagate” story. More topics are available in Harri’s Mobilitics blog.

Widian Mobile 3.0

The new Widian Mobile version will introduce a completely renewed server platform which will make it easier to add new mobile service extensions. The immediate improvements include the renewed admin and end-user interfaces, and the support for the latest SyncML protocol version.

In combination with the latest Teamware Office version 7.4 Widian Mobile 3.0 will provide the automatic password change when the user changes Teamware Office password.

Recently there has been also questions about the support for the latest Nokia E75 mobile device. Currently (June 2009) there are several reported problems with the mobile email and calendar functionality. The recommendation is not to use this device until the substantial Nokia operating system update. The Nokia E71 model is recommended instead, with a robust functionality, a slim design and a full set of features.

Mobile Security and “Nokiagate”

The latest Nokia mobile devices introduced the “Email wizard” which helps the user to setup an email connection. This wizard, greatly assisting the user, also sends out the email account information – unnecessarily and without users permission – to Nokia servers. This information contains the login id and the password, among others.

When the user types in the email information to the wizard, the application tries to download the email server profile information including the server address and the connection security settings. For Gmail, Yahoo and other teleoperator email systems this works but for corporate email systems this information is not publicly available.

The user email account email information is used to test the connection to the email system, in effect the server in the USA connects to the corporate email with the user login id and password.

This erroneous wizard behavior has been reported to Nokia and the development is making changes in the later operating system including this wizard. Read the latest news about this and other mobile world topics in http://blog.mobilitics.net.

Harri Salminen

---

16/06/09 09:55

---