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Mobile security and antivirus software maker Lookout is launching a premium version of its popular Android software on November 16th, via a solution called "Lookout Premium for Android."

The new system includes additional privacy controls, expanded data backup and restore capabilities, remote wipe and lock, priority customer support plus the features already available in its free program, like antivirus/anti-malware, firewall, "find my phone" functionality for lost devices, contacts backup and more.

Note to Android developers: the Google Android Market is open, but it's not that open. After being profiled by The New York Times Bits blog, DLP Mobile's new app Secret SMS Replicator, which forwards all SMS text messages to another device unbeknownst to a phone's owner, has been banned from the Android Market.

The reason? The app violates the "Android Market Content Policy," which states that apps that involve "invasions of personal privacy" are not allowed.

This week another round of "Android spyware" news hit the Web, when a study by university researchers found that some Android applications were transmitting private data to advertisers, often without users' knowledge. The team studied 30 out of the 358 most popular Android applications that allow access to the location of the users, camera and audio data and logged their conclusions using an oddly named piece of software called "TaintDroid."

But is this news as bad as it seems? Google certainly doesn't think so, saying this is not a problem with Android specifically, but with all software. What do you think? Let us know in ReadWriteMobile's first weekly poll.

A surveillance firm is now selling a spyware application for Apple's new slate computer, the iPad. With this software installed, users can secretly track activity including emails sent and received, web sites visited and contacts added to the iPad's address book. The information is surreptitiously recorded to a log file which is then uploaded to the Web whenever the iPad has an Internet connection. Afterwards, the user doing the spying can review the data from any computer connected to the Web, with no further need to gain physical access the iPad.

Today, AVG, makers of antivirus program LinkScanner, noticed a disturbing rash of nearly identical Facebook profiles aimed at infecting users' computers with spyware.

AVG's research chief Roger Thompson said that LinkScanner users had reported "rogue spyware attacks" from a large number of these profiles. He postulated that the fake profiles were created automatically, which would indicate that someone, somehow has figured out a way around the ReCaptchas used to protect Facebook from bot-created content.