The Saga Continues: Latest on the Carrier IQ Uproar

[exfileme]

Carriers and manufacturers are denying the use of Carrier IQ left and right. Meanwhile, the company is facing two class-action lawsuits and investigations from international groups.

The Saga Continues: Latest on the Carrier IQ Uproar : Read more

 

[lashabane]

"Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ's VP of marketing"

Who could live with a name like this?

 

[igot1forya]

I wonder if rooting your phone (to verify your personal security and privacy) can be justified to the carriers. Certainly, your carrier (if found guilty) will have to allow you to maintain your warranty after this debacle. Even those carriers who "claim" to not use this can't be trusted by there word alone - it requires independent confirmation which would require the rooting of MANY phones...

 

[mrpijey]

Well, sh!t definately hit the fan on this one. Good work, there aren't enough deep levels in hell for businesses like Carrier IQ and the service providers supporting them.

Burn baby burn!

 

[dark_lord69]

Q: Great for those with Android but what about Blackberry?
A: After doing plenty of searching and reading about this in reguards to blackberry phones. Someone claimed that there is no icon for it but it IS listed in the "applications" section under blackberry options.

Here is what I found at crackberry.com:
"I can also confirm that there is no icon for this application, though it does show under "IQAgent" in the application management listing and is listed as optional.

Update:
The application and all listed modules removes easily with a delete of the application. No wipe or extreme measures needed. I do not think BlackBerry users need to be worried about this app, if its found, simply go in and uninstall it."

If this is correct then I don't have it on my Blackberry. I encourage you to check yours!

 

[jgalecio]

"The Sprint privacy policy makes it clear we collect information that includes how a device is functioning and how it is being used," Sprint admitted. "Carrier IQ is an integral part of the Sprint service. Sprint uses Carrier IQ to help maintain our network performance."

Better do a change of plan then cause your crappy 3g/4g network performance is horrible. I left tmobile for sprint and I have been in cellular misery since...

 

[soccerdocks]

Is Carrier IQ present on iPod touches? I ask this because I have an a 2nd generation iPod touch with iOS 4 as iOS 5 is not compatible with it.

 

[lashabane]

[citation][nom]soccerdocks[/nom]Is Carrier IQ present on iPod touches? I ask this because I have an a 2nd generation iPod touch with iOS 4 as iOS 5 is not compatible with it.[/citation]
iPods are not phones so I'm fairly certain that it doesn't apply.

 

[trandoanhung1991]

I thought it was HTC that blamed the carriers. Motorola too?

 

[hoofhearted]

Even bank (Chase) apps user id and passwords are clear to it.

 

[hoofhearted]

I know Verizon said they didn't use it, but their statement wasn't strong enough to the effect that they didn't use something else.

 

[ta152h]

The Senate will never let this continue. All illegal monitoring of American citizens is only to be done by the government. Of course, if these carriers are willing to share this data ...

 

[randomizer]

I'm pleased to know that my phone is entirely incapable of running this software. With 9MB of storage and a processor barely capable of adding integers it would be impossible for me not to notice it on there.

 

[de5_Roy]

i feel sorry for android, with great popularity comes great malware infection.

 

[TheKurrgan]

[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]The Senate will never let this continue. All illegal monitoring of American citizens is only to be done by the government. Of course, if these carriers are willing to share this data ...[/citation]
The government of our fine nation protecting our privacy? Been to an airline in the last decade? If not take a little stroll down to an airport after PAYING for your ticket.. you'll find out how much they value your privacy.
I doubt they'll do anything frankly, however the class action law suites are much more likely to yield results IMO.. If it is won as described above, it would nuke CarrierIQ out of existence and most likely dent the whole damned wireless industry if it spills over to carriers themselves and manufacturers.
I will say this however to the actual CarrierIQ program itself: I've not been able to spot it storing any of the clear text info past a reboot, nor have I been able to see it transmitting it, however whatever it IS transmitting is encrypted so I can't verify squat.
Even if it wasn't sending this info anywhere, the fact that it makes it SO easy for some one else to watch this info if their devices where compromised is scary. This does constitute a real security problem since I was able to replicate the guy on youtube's session and tell my buddy his full password for his bank account, what bank it was, their login URL and his Facebook login.
That said, it makes deploying a root kit real easy for some one who wants to infect phones to gain information.
Lets also not forget the marketing advantages to such information that they surely aren't selling for profit.. HAH
EPIC FAIL.
Makes me glad I've always wiped my android devices and put cyanogenmod on them square away..

 

[SirGCal]

[citation][nom]jgalecio[/nom]Better do a change of plan then cause your crappy 3g/4g network performance is horrible. I left tmobile for sprint and I have been in cellular misery since...[/citation]

Every area has different experiences. I left AT&T for Sprint and I can't believe I suffered with that horrid experience with AT&T for so long. Sprint is hands down, far above and away, better in every way... Here anyhow. 4G screams, even tethered, fast enough to stream HQ videos. Even 3G has smooth and fast surfing speeds. Never waiting on pictures/pages to load. But again; that's here... Where my parents live, AT&T had no signal at all, what-so-ever. Sprint is acceptable but not top notch, Verizon (what they have) is a bit stronger. That's there. Every area is different. Every company needs to better their equipment somewhere. Still, I'm overjoyed with my move to Sprint.

Still, I want CarrierIQ to die... I hate rooting my phones but just to do this alone; I'm very tempted. I'm hoping they at least are forced to include a removal method due to this so I don't have to.

 

[NotANerd]

As important this revelation is, I wonder what kind of smoke screen it is.

 

[Guest]

I am surprised you actually followed up on a (mobile) story, seeing how I never saw a correction to the whole "Avengers scenes shot with an iPhone4S"-story. Yeah, it wasn't true.

 

[eddieroolz]

This has been quite a bombshell, it seems. I'm glad all carriers in Canada do not use this software, but the part about iOS containing this worries me a lot, since I use my iPod touch for a lot of blog reading and web surfing.

The fact is, I do not see a section under iOS that states I can opt in/out of information collection by Apple, which makes me think that Apple's statement is utter BS to begin with. If it's under iTunes, then it might as well consider the option not there as many users don't even know how to operate basic software.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]ne0_[/nom]Countries that "acknowledge" spying on it's citizens...http/wikileaks.org/The-Spyfiles-The-Map.html[/citation]
And the rest of them lied and are spying too