You may have heard this week about the Trojan for the Symbian OS that was distributed by warez sites, Mosquito 2.0. Unsuspecting gamers found their Symbian series 60 smartphones sending SMS messages to a number in the UK the entire time they were playing the game. The messages cost as much as GBP 1.50 each so the cost added up quickly. The logical assumption everyone made was that some unscrupulous hacker put the Trojan in the game to make some money. The reality was far worse, in my opinion.

Seems the Trojan was put there by the game’s DEVELOPER. He felt it was a good method of copy protection to have the user’s device send a message to report itself when an unauthorized version of the game was being played. This is wrong on so many levels that I’m at risk of getting started on horrendous copy protection schemes. But I won’t, at least not right now.

The developer of the Mosquito game, OJUM, got a lot of complaints about the messaging without permission so he removed it from legitimate copies of the game but cracked versions were still out there and they contained the Trojan. So, some might say the crackers got what they deserved. What do you think? Do you get a little uneasy thinking about programs on mobile devices “checking in” with the developer from time to time without your knowledge?