NSA or U.S. National Security Agency has been on the brink of privacy news in the past few days. According to a report published by a German newspaper Der Spiegel on Sunday, there’s much more to worry about.

The report reveals that NSA can crack protective measures of iPhones, Android and BlackBerries and gain access to user’s most sensitive data. The newspaper writes that the agency can see contact lists, SMS traffic, location history information etc.

The documents also mentioned ‘individually tailored’ cases without the knowledge of smartphone makers.

In the internal documents, experts boast about successful access to iPhone data in instances where the NSA is able to infiltrate the computer a person uses to sync their iPhone. Mini-programs, so-called “scripts,” then enable additional access to at least 38 iPhone features.

In other words, NSA can gain remote access to computer decrypt iPhone files that are made during iTunes sync. Working groups have been set up for each operating system and they have been given the task to gain access to data on most used smartphone OS systems.

They can even access BlackBerry’s email, which has been termed as uncrackable by the out of business company.

Apparently, there was a period in 2009 when the NSA was temporarily unable to access BlackBerry devices. After the Canadian company acquired another firm the same year, it changed the way in compresses its data.

But in March 2010, the department responsible at Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency declared in a top secret document it had regained access to BlackBerry data and celebrated with the word, “champagne!”

According to a 2009 document of the agency, they can see and read SMS traffic.

The agencies also team up with Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Hotmail to help with encrypted data that can be exploited.

The Guardian also published a wonderful article around this story . Yahoo and Microsoft are also concerned over NSA’s tactics.

So what are your thoughts on this?

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