They are all the rage on the iPhone, Facebook, and plenty of other mobile and social networking platforms.  If you do not play them, you have probably gotten emails from friends inviting you to join their Mafia, Vampire Horde, or other online gaming circle.  The basic premise of these games is that the more friends you have in your game, the better the game will be for everyone.  Oh yeah, and you also get to spend real money purchasing credits which can be used in the game, making it a true fictional world.

The problem arises when you need to enter your seemingly innocuous personal information in order to create an account.  Things like your phone number or email address (I hope no one is providing anything more secure like social security numbers).  Storm8’s games, such as Vampire Live, iMobsters, and others have become mainstays at the top of the iTunes App Store download list.

A new lawsuit alleges that developers at Storm8 have exploited a backdoor vulnerability in Apple’s iPhone, allowing them to steal users’ personal information, including phone numbers.  According to a statement, Storm8 claims this was the result of a simple bug.  According to the lawsuit, this could only have been accomplished through, “very specific and specialized software code.”  You can read the full lawsuit, here, and there is an extensive discussion of the issue and lawsuit in Storm8’s forums.  Bottom line: until this is resolved, I would be wary of providing any information to Storm8. 

[via The Consumerist]

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