Following the release of their first update for evasi0n7, the evad3rs have published their second letter to the jailbreak community. The group posted the link to its Twitter account last night, saying that Taig has been removed and that it wanted to address some additional concerns.
The letter essentially covers 3 concerns regarding the app store that originally came bundled with the Chinese version of evasi0n7: privacy, piracy and money. The evad3rs say that Taig has been completely removed from their app, and that they haven’t collected any money from them…
Here’s probably the most interesting part of the letter (for me anyway):
“There have been a lot of rumors listing various amounts we’ve been paid. We have received no monies from any group, including Taig. We will not be accepting any money. Our donations are being given to Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure to help protect jailbreaking as your legal right.”
Since the release of evasi0n7, we’ve been hearing rumors that the evad3rs made a deal with Taig to bundle its app store in the jailbreak utility worth in upwards of $1 million. It’s not clear now if that was never the case, or if it was, and the evad3rs tabled the offer following the backlash.
Here, the evad3rs address privacy concerns regarding the sending of user data:
“First and foremost, and of utmost concern, is privacy. No one’s data was ever sent anywhere. Of course, as a member of the community whose work frees devices, it would be against everything we’ve worked for the last 7 years to jeopardize the security of the users of our software. To reiterate, no Taig software was installed unless the computer’s language was set to Chinese. Furthermore, no Taig software would run unless the user opened the Taig application.
After rumors abound of encrypted data being sent for users in China who’ve installed Taig, we decided to do what we do best – reverse engineer the code of Taig to understand what was being sent. Taig transmitted data similar to what Cydia transmits. Unique device identifiers were transmitted in encrypted form similar to how Cydia uses SSL to protect the privacy of its users. Taig did not transmit any private user data from the devices at all.”
And finally, the group clarifies its stance on piracy and what happened with Taig:
“Our written and verbal agreement with Taig banned it. They assured us it was not in there. We did not check every package in their store but a cursory examination before release found no problems. However, after investigation and after notification from the community, we found examples, including pirated tweaks, Apple App Store apps, and even pod2g’s PodDJ app. We dropped the ball on this. While we at first did not believe Taig purposefully violated our agreement, the depth of the transgression against the software developers and the jailbreak community cannot be overlooked and we could not move forward after that even if it were fixed. We terminated our relationship with them. We are very disappointed that they have decided to put up a cracked version of the jailbreak on their site that installs Taig. We did not give them any permission or source code.”
The letter ends with the group promising to fix the remaining problems with evasi0n7, though it’ll obviously take them a while. Not only is it the holidays, but the evad3rs say that the last few days have been very stressful for them, and that they need to take some time to recover.
For complete context, make sure to read the entire statement. And for more evasi0n7 coverage, see:
- Evad3rs release untethered iOS 7 jailbreak
- How to jailbreak iOS 7 using evasi0n7 [Mac tutorial]
- How to jailbreak iOS 7 using evasi0n7 [Windows tutorial]
- Problems with evasi0n7? Here’s what to do
- What is Taiji and what does China have to do with the evasi0n7 jailbreak?
- List of iOS 7 compatible jailbreak tweaks
- Why the evad3rs released their iOS 7 jailbreak today
- 2 reasons why you should jailbreak your iOS device today (and 6 reasons why you shouldn’t)
- The evad3rs speak out about evasi0n7, Taig, money, and more
