It seemed to have the makings of a big news story almost two months ago when The Japan Times reported and the Hacker News spread the word that Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police had arrested five mobile app developers for creating and embedding a virus into smartphone applications that downloaded the users’ contacts.
But now it appears that the case has fizzled. The Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office dismissed what would have been their largest data theft case involving smartphones:
But the prosecutors office considered it difficult to conclude the information was leaked without their [the user’s] knowledge because a message reading “downloading contact addresses” was displayed on the phones’ screens before people downloaded the application.
Also, there was no evidence that the five people were aware of wrongly acquiring the information, the office said.