Yeah, it would, if it were actually true.

Even though it apparently isn’t (according to Lookout itself), Google News actually does carry the Lookout story (as Item #2 about Google), and currently shows 751 related articles on the topic. So there are indeed a lot of headlines. The vast bulk of them, however, appear to be responsible journalism — leading with less inflammatory headlines and/or telling a different story. Ex:

“Android wallpapers sent information to China?”
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/29/android-wallpapers-sent-information-to-china/

“‘App Genome Project’ Exposes Potential Smartphone Risks”
http://www.darkreading.com/insiderthreat/security/app-security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226300078

The whole anti-iPhone “antennagate” issue was *really* annoying (even though I have experienced the problem myself), and for me at least, these anti-Android misrepresentations are exactly the same. Pot, meet kettle. The next time you get pissed at some idiot Android fanboy/fansite for creating a mountain out of an iPhone molehill, remember that we’re doing the same thing here too. What does that say about us?

Lookout has indicated that the “4 million user‚Äôs info sent to China” stories spun by MacObserver, Appleinsider, and other Apple fansites have misstated their findings. Only a few of those sites, however, have posted corrections/updates:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/29/millions_of_android_users_hit_by_malicious_data_theft_app.html

“(Update: Lookout has clarified in followup comments with AppleInsider that the intent of their “App Genome Project” research was to “identify security threats in the wild and provide insight into how applications are accessing personal data and other phone resources.”

The group noted that the Android wallpaper app was “not proven to be malicious,” but that the app does “ask the user for specific information around the phone details and that information is transferred to a server [in China].”

Correcting the original VentureBeat story, Lookout stated that “the apps from these developers send several pieces of sensitive data to a server, including a device‚Äôs phone number, subscriber identifier, and currently programmed voicemail number. The applications we analyzed did not access a device‚Äôs SMS messages, browsing history, or voicemail password (unless a user manually programmed the voicemail number on the device to include the voicemail password).”

Lookout also reiterated there is “no proof of malicious intent and in the past apps have been a bit overzealous in getting access to sensitive data with no ill intent.” Lookout compared the Android wallpaper app copying local data to a Chinese server with a recent App Store title that purported to be a flashlight app while actually including a hidden SOCKS proxy that could be used for tethering.”