[tvilkamo]

Thanks for reporting here as well! We thoroughly investigated the case with N8 after Belle update, and everything is now under control. A few variants were affected, and for this minority group, your phones accidentially did attempt to report usage data to Nokia. But as soon as we heard about the incident, we decided to delete all data from Nokia servers - old data removed, new data not accepted, and stop message sent to the 360Panel clients so that they won't even try sending data anymore. And the clean Belle files have been uploaded to the servers.

Thanks again, and sorry about this on my own behalf!

Tommi Vilkamo

Senior Manager, Consumer Intelligence, Nokia

(not a official company spokesperson, just one employee informed/involved with the case)

P.s. here's the official Nokia reply that we'll post to the Belle FAQ section:

---

Q: After updating to Nokia Belle I have two new applications called 360Panel and Nokia Crash Reporter in my phone. What are they?

A:  360Panel and Nokia Crash Reporter are Nokia applications intended for Nokia internal use and research purposes. They were included by accident in some Nokia Belle variants and those software versions have now already been removed from our update servers. If you have those applications on your phone, please note that usage data collected via 360Panel is not saved on any Nokia servers in line with our privacy policy. You can stop your phone from sending anonymous crash logs to Nokia by going to Nokia Crash Reporter app, press the softkey on the lower right hand corner of your screen and select “Stop”. We nevertheless advise to redownloading the Nokia Belle update via Nokia Suite.
Please note: For this you have to delete the old software package from your PC first. You can do this in Nokia Suite via Tools -> Options -> own device -> remove device. This will clear all the device specific data on your harddrive, including the old software files. Alternatively you can also manually clear the data in the following folders:
Win XP -> C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Nokia\Nokia Suite\NOSSU2

Win 7 -> C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Nokia Suite\NOSSU2

[sk_vishwanath]

Ok, Thanks for the reply.

If the 360Panel app is still showing status as Active.

Try uploading the data, It will try to upload and then stops and Status is updated to Stopped.

Thanks,

Vishwanath.

[Shrieky]

Well nokia suite when i tried reinstalling tells that belle update is 4mb and its downloading a 4MB version and installing something. Lets see

[DP_Ind]

@tvilkamo - Please confirm if this is fixed in the Belle firmwire for product code 0599255. I'm planning to reinstall my Belle update after 2 hrs.

[JoeFishman]

presumably if i don't have the 360Panel or Nokia Crash Reporter apps on my phone, I don;t need to do anything..? Worried as I updated Feb 7th evening.

[dodgevipergts]

I deleted it using ybrowser going to c:\system\data\ and deleting 'hugocl' then went and deleted the application normally saved me a couple of meg

[AnubhavRanjan]

I have already turned it off...But no effect...It still send out the sms to this number +491771787777...with the following content...Everytime it send out, I lose Rs.5 from my account...

SP360 CMD=REGISTER;ID=AMB2;IMEI=356237042086288;SIM=40510;MCC=405;MNC=10;

[flagpole]

I'm quite impressed with the speedy and open way in which nokia has dealt with this.

there are certain other phone manufacturers we could think of that would have kept schtum.

[tvilkamo]

If you have 360Panel etc on your phone after Belle, please reinstall the clean Belle build as instructed (by myself in previous post + in official FAQ). Otherwise you will have some crapware in your phone that's mostly harmless but that you are better without :-)

Sidenote: less than 1% of the people who updated during the first day were affected. Almost all variants out there were clean right from the start. Thanks again for everyone who reported, and sorry from my own behalf about the issue.

Tommi Vilkamo

Senior Manager, Consumer Intelligence

Nokia

[nickb99]

I think AnubhavRanjan raises a good point. Through an admitted error, Nokia has cost a number of users money in wasted texts sent.  How many thousands of users got the firmware update with 360Panel on?   By including this app, albeit in error, they have undoubtedly cost many users a few pennies each in wasted texts. I would think it would be reasonable for them to offer some small compensation to affected users. If you agree, please say so below.    

In my own case they might argue that its my fault, as I bought the phone from a store on Ebay (but of course, the store was part of a resale chain that started with Nokia).

A bigger issue is the careless collection of our personal data. Sure, Nokia say that it is anonymized and now its been deleted - but who really knows?  In the case of including 360Panel in the Belle update they cannot argue it was the users fault.  That really was poor update management and I expect better from Nokia. Our own data is private and sacred and belongs to no-one but ourselves. Sure, [one person from] Nokia said sorry, they deleted the data etc - well, they should have taken more care in the first place. Unless users like us stand up for our privacy rights then large companies like Nokia will continue to abuse the power they have to collect this sort of information.  

Exactly what action was taken in Nokia to make sure this does not happen again?  How will they manage these kind of apps in future? Why on earth was this kind of privacy-invading app anywhere near the Nokia firmware servers?  Personally I would like to hear from the person with responsibility for privacy at Nokia about how this happened and how they are going to stop it happening again - with all due respect to Tommi.

[kj55552009]

There are thousands of users who still have not noticed that they have this harmful program on their phones that is sending text messages and costing money to the user. Nokia needs to release an automatic patch that scans for and removes this program.

[tvilkamo]

Busy day today, but to quickly correct some facts:

 - a few hundred devices were affected, to my knowledge, not thousands

 - we have already sent a stop call from the servers to the all devices affected, so for most, 360Panel is stopped and not sending usage data or sms messages anymore

 - almost all data is cleaned from the servers (and we're cleaning the rest as we speak)

 - if the 360Panel registration sms fails, it attempts three times max. This seems to be the case with AnubhavRanjan: we checked the servers, and it seems that we never received the message from your IMEI, so it tried three times. If you want compensation for the lost 3x5Rs and for your inconvenience, please contact  your local Nokia customer care!

[nickb99]

Tommi, with respect, that is pretty lousy service. If AnubhavRanjan calls his local Nokia Care - unless you have sent a worldwide communication about 360Panel to all Nokia Care Centres - they won't have a clue what he is talking about. I have personal experience dealing with Nokia Care (here in New Zealand) and I'll just say that the general level of knowledge was unsatisfactory. 

I think that we all know he will get brushed off, or passed around. Come on, take some proper action and fix his problem. And I would still like to hear something public from the privacy person at Nokia, for me that is the bigger issue.