Privacy Uh-Oh: Droid Incredible Takes Secret Screenshots of your Browsing History; Near-Impossible to Delete

HTC’s Droid Incredible is widely considered one of the best of the current generation of Android smartphones, but this privacy bug could tarnish both its reputation and that of HTC’s Sense user interface if they don’t somehow come up with a fix soon: It’s been discovered that the Incredible takes JPEG screengrabs of websites in your browsing history. Temporary storage like this is nothing new, but here’s the thing: According to Boy Genius Report, the screenshots are really, really hard to delete.

Closing your browser session, clearing your browser history, and even running your phone through a full factory reset will not delete the images; the only way to get rid of them is to find them in a folder in the phone’s internal storage and manually delete them — not the most intuitive tasks for your average phone owner.

Obviously, there are major issues presented by a phone that captures in a difficult-to-delete manner your banking or PayPal information, personal emails, or other sensitive information; consider what be if you had to get your phone repaired or wanted to resell it. And the issue doesn’t necessarily just stop at the Incredible: Other HTC phones using Sense may well be at risk.

(Boy Genius Report via Engadget)