The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it has begun a formal investigation into Samsung's strategy of using FRAND-encumbered patents related to 3G wireless networking standards in lawsuits. The announcement comes after the Commission began a preliminary inquiry into the matter last November and several courts in the EU have struck down Samsung's attempts to use the patents against Apple.

Recent controversy sparked by the installation of monitoring software on millions of smartphones has led US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) to propose a requirement that carriers and phone makers inform consumers about the presence of monitoring software and gain their "express consent" before collecting and transmitting information from phones.

The controversy started a couple months back when a developer publicized the widespread use of Carrier IQ software, which phone manufacturers and carriers use to monitor what happens on a smartphone. While Apple, Samsung, HTC, AT&T and others all said the software is used only as a diagnostics tool to improve network and service performance, congressmen started denouncing the use of Carrier IQ, and class-action lawsuits were filed.

Markey, co-chairman of the bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, says such software should only be used on a consumer's phone with the phone user's explicit consent. Yesterday, he released draft legislation that would require disclosure of monitoring software when a consumer buys a mobile phone. The legislation also would prevent manufacturers from collecting and transmitting information unless consumer consent is obtained, and outlines security policies companies must follow when they receive personal information from smartphones.

“Consumers have the right to know and to say no to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information,” Markey said in a statement. “While consumers rely on their phones, their phones relay all sorts of information about them, often without their knowledge or consent." Markey's legislation is just in a "discussion draft" right now, so it's early in the legislative process. It would also take a while to be enforced. The draft directs the Federal Trade Commission to promulgate regulations described in the legislation "not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act."

Read the comments on this post

KDE developer Aaron Seigo has announced a new upcoming tablet computer, called the Spark, that will ship with KDE's Plasma environment. The device, which has a seven-inch display and a 1GHz ARM CPU, will sell for €200 ($262). Underneath the shiny KDE surface, the Spark reportedly runs Mer, a community-driven fork of the Linux-based MeeGo platform. Seigo says that the device will be open and that users will be able to install custom firmware.

Although the Spark's hardware specifications aren't particularly impressive and the device is unlikely to attract a mainstream audience, it will appeal to open source software developers who want an inexpensive hardware environment for developing touchscreen-friendly applications with Qt and QML.

Verizon may be preparing to launch shared data plans, according to a post on Engadget and some speculative phrasing on the company's recent earnings call. The "account level data plans" would give customers a chunk of data that could be shared among multiple devices, similar to family plans for minutes and text messages.

Minutes and text messages have been shareable among family plan members on Verizon and other carriers for years now, where customers pay a base charge and then around $10 for each additional line of access to the pot. By contrast, data has always been meted out in discrete chunks to each device and phone line. In a screenshot posted by Engadget, the new data plans appear to have a similar pricing model to phone minutes, with a base charge for a big chunk of data, and then an additional $10 charge for each device accessing that data.

Fran Shammo, Verizon's chief financial officer, confirmed on the company's recent earnings call that it is exploring how to implement a family data plan, noting that Verizon is a "premium priced service in the market." Apparently, family plans aren't going to turn Verizon into Uncle Al's Discount Data Barn.

Not only could the plans create relief for people-families, they could benefit android families, too: if the price is right, a single person with a handful of gadgets (smartphone, tablet, wireless hotspot) might be able to get one plan to share among them. That's more like a forever-alone plan, though.

Read the comments on this post

Schneider Optics, part of the German lens maker Schneider Kreuznach, has launched a new interchangeable lens system for the iPhone 4 and 4S. Called iPro, the new system is available now with a wide-angle and fisheye lens, along with a tough aluminum case and storage system that doubles as a handle and tripod mount. Company representatives recently showed Ars a pre-production prototype of an additional 2x telephoto lens at Macworld|iWorld 2012, which will be launching soon as well.

The iPro system relies on a custom aluminum case which fits the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. The case has a bayonet fitting to attach and precisely position iPro lenses. The lenses themselves have precision crafted aluminum barrels, heavy glass, and high quality multi-layer coatings. Users can select from a perspective-warping fisheye lens, 0.7x wide angle lens, or (soon) a short 2x telephoto lens. The 35mm equivalent focal length on an iPhone 4 is 9mm, 20mm, and 56mm respectively, while on an iPhone 4S those focal lengths would be 10mm, 24mm, and 70mm.

Symantec last week identified 13 new malicious applications on the Android Market, saying the combined download figures—reportedly up to 5 million—make it "the highest distribution of any malware identified so far this year." The applications use Android.Counterclank, which Symantec says is "a bot-like threat that can receive commands to carry out certain actions, as well as steal information from the device."

We found six of the apps from three publishers still appearing on the Android market Monday morning. Symantec calls Android.Counterclank a Trojan, and Google's Android Market policies specifically ban Trojans and other types of malware. On the other hand, Symantec classifies Android.Counterclank as having "very low" risk, and the app publishers barely seem interested in hiding the programs' capabilities. Users can simply uninstall the application to remove the threat.

One such app identified by Symantec as a Trojan contains "write browser's history and bookmarks" under its list of permissions. This is coupled with a generic warning from Google that "Malicious applications can use this to erase or modify your Browser's data." Another app on Symantec's list is "Deal or BE Millionaire," and one user review from more than two weeks ago warns, "beware malware... every time you run this game, a 'search' icon gets added randomly to one of your screens. I keep deleting the icon, but it always reappears. If you tap the icon you get a page that looks suspiciously like the Google search page." Symantec says the presence of the search icon on the home screen is one sign of Android.Counterclank infection.

Symantec says the apps can "copy bookmarks on the device, copy opt out details, copy push notifications, copy shortcuts, identify the last executed command, modify the browser's home page, steal build information," and retrieve device data such as the Android ID, MAC address and SIM serial number. We've asked Google if the company plans to remove all of these apps from the Market and will provide an update as we get new information.

UPDATE: As one commenter points out, Lookout Mobile Security has a different take on the matter, that Android.Counterclank is not malware but "an aggressive form of an ad network." While these apps contain software that is annoying and that average users do not want, Lookout notes that it isn't designed to commit identity theft or financial fraud.

Read the comments on this post

The Kindle Fire is crushing standard Android tablets in market share after only three months, according to data collected by Flurry Analytics. Measured in application sessions on Android from November 2011 to January 2012, the Kindle Fire went from a 3 percent market share to 36 percent, while the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a brand that has been on sale for over two years, dropped from 64 percent market share to 36 percent.

According to Amazon, over 4 million Kindle Fires were sold in the month of December despite its lukewarm reception. These sales were enough to give the device close to a third of the Android tablet market, as the shares of the Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer, and Acer Iconia Tab dropped to a collective 18 percent. The Kindle Fire made an even better showing in paid app downloads, representing 2.53 app downloads from a 5-app sample of top sellers for every one downloaded on a Galaxy Tab.

Granted, flipping the numbers in the Android tablet space doesn't take an astronomical number of sales: for instance, Motorola shipped only 200,000 Xoom tablets in the fourth quarter. The Kindle Fire also likely owes much of its success to its $199 price, hundreds of dollars below the rest (the other tablets listed here have starting prices of $350 and higher). Flurry also attributes the Kindle Fire's growth to Amazon's focus on an ecosystem and content for users, an approach closer what Apple uses for the iPad, rather than focusing on hardware specs.

Read the comments on this post

On almost any given day, Twitter receives a handful of requests to delete tweets that link to pirated versions of copyrighted content—and quickly complies by erasing the offending tweets from its site.

That fact itself is probably unsurprising to people familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown process, which gives sites like Twitter a "safe harbor" against lawsuits related to user behavior and uploads—so long as the sites don't knowingly tolerate pirated material or links to such material.

But Twitter has taken the unusual step of making DMCA takedown notices public, in partnership with Chilling Effects, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several universities. The site shows 4,410 cease and desist notices dating back to November 2010. While most of 2011 shows daily or near-daily activity, there is just one notice in January 2012, suggesting either that Twitter is suddenly receiving fewer DMCA takedown notices or that the database is not quite up to date. (If we find out from Twitter or Chilling Effects, we'll update the story.)