Does the online service Reverse Phone Detective Work?

Am I allowed to reverse engineer a public service and blog about it?

• I've been working lately with a reverse proxy to pen test our own app and I actually see some very interesting network traffic on both my laptop and my phone. I would like to investigate services I use and blog about how they work. I find it being very instructive but fear potential legal consequences. Examples of such services are iCloud, Dropbox, Facebook, etc..

• Answer:

  I don't think you're using the term "reverse engineer" in the way that it's meant in legal circles.  Reverse-engineering a process or product is essentially the act of taking it apart to determine how it works so that you can reproduce it on your own.  That doesn't sound like exactly what you're trying to do here. I'm also not sure you're using the term "public service" appropriately, either.  Dropbox, Facebook, iCloud, etc. are not "public services" like television, radio, or power utilities are; they are private products offered by private companies and have Terms of Service associated with their use. The real question here is whether or not Apple, Facebook, or Dropbox would consider what you're doing to be a violation of their Terms of Service - if so, they would be well within their rights to terminate your use of their service, if you were doing something of which they did not approve.  This is regardless of whether the information that you're using, obtaining, or posting is "publicly available" or not. As to the exact question, I can't advise you whether or not your intended use is legal or not; but I can say that it would be highly likely to raise questions on the part of the service providers if you were to make things that they are intentionally obscuring into public knowledge.  And they have far deeper pockets than you do when it comes to the threat of litigation, whether that's right or not.This answer is not a substitute for professional legal advice....