[ale] somewhat OT - are Android Smartwatch Bluetooth notifiers safe?

Neal Rhodes neal at mnopltd.com
Tue Mar 7 13:40:09 EST 2017


So, I succumbed to curiosity and bought a DZ09 smart watch for $3 from
China.   And it actually seems to work.   Nice looking watch,  marginal
camera,   ok MP3 player,   marginal voice recorder,   USB storage.     I
spent more on a microSD card than I did on the watch.   I took it to
Tmobile, and they stuffed in a SIM card, and the standalone cell phone
it lit up and talked to the Tmobile operator.   So it appears to work as
a GSM phone, at least in the Tmobile store.   Just for fun, I ordered an
$8 SIM card to hook up with the $3/mo Tmobile service. 

The next logical experiment would be connecting it to an android phone
to get email and SMS messages echo'd to the watch.    But... this is
where it gets murky.  Now they would have me install some obscure piece
of Chinese software on my regular phone.   This is where I hear the
robot saying "Danger, Will Robinson". 

There appear to be quite a few BT Notifier Apps on the Android market.
Are any of them safe?   Have any been examined to see if they "phone
home" with details like my email passwords? 

Neal Rhodes
MNOP Ltd
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