Carrier I Q

[lomatopo]

This topic is heating up...

http://gizmodo.com/5864220/what-is-carrier-iq

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/11/30/phone-rootkit-carrier-iq-may-have-violated-wiretap-law-in-millions-of-cases/

What Is Carrier IQ? (Updated)

Holy data privacy scandal! Over the last week the news that Carrier IQ has been tracking millions of smartphone users without their knowledge has ballooned into a full-blown clusternut. Carrier IQ, huh? Sounds nefarious. But what exactly does it do? And why should you care?

Carrier IQ is a third-party metrics service...

Smartphone manufacturers and carriers alike are dying to know how you use their products in the real world. They want this information to help them to study performance, make business decisions, and improve products. Carrier IQ is an "embedded analytics company" that serves that information up to its clients on a silver, snooping platter.

[Somtamnication]

And they appear to be on American phones only. But who knows. I did install the app to check and remove them. Nothing so far.

[Phil Conners]

The real Mastermind behind Carrier IQ

[nikster]

The VP of "Carrier IQ" is called Andrew Coward...

Pretty sure iPhones are safe from this as Apple won't allow 3rd party software on its phones.

Goes to show that you can trust the carriers about as far as you can throw them... unbelievable. I mean I don't really care what this was used for but software that's secretly logging my phone activities to upload it to some server ... well in the real world that's called Spyware. I am hoping for a big, fat, class action lawsuit.

[Phil Conners]

I'm afraid not Nikster.

“We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update,” Natalie Harrison, a spokeswoman for Apple, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information.”

-- Business Week

I personally don't think it's a big deal, just diagnostic data about call quality etc.

[nikster]

I'm afraid not Nikster.

You're right. Crazy!! <deleted> were they thinking? I am shocked.

More details are needed though - what data was captured. Who processed the data. Etc. Data that can be used for nefarious purposes has a tendency to end up getting used for nefarious purposes... see those naked people pictures from the airport body x-ray scanners. They got out despite all the promises that this data would never even be stored...

This video shows the kind of information gathered by Carrier IQ. Namely... everything. Carrier IQ logs everything and anything happening on the device- buttons pushed, numbers called, text messages sent and received (including full text) and so on. It's the ultimate key logger.

[nikster]

Update: Apple maintains that Carrier IQ software on iPhones was opt in only, that is you had to opt in specifically before it sent anything; and that it only sent anonymous user data, and no personal information like text messages and emails, keystrokes, or app usage.

Nothing is ever sent to Apple unless you go to Settings->General->About, and then scroll down to Diagnostics & Usage, and turn it on. It's off by default.

Nevertheless, the fact that Carrier IQ is capable of recording all those things - at least on Android - is worrying.

[Phil Conners]

I am not convinced the guy with the video really know what he is doing. Afaics he is just going through the event handlers on the OS, that's kinda the functional background for any OS, nothing to do specifically with CIQ. CIQ may be in there and may capture these events, but that's not what he is showing unless I misunderstood something.

I don't understand why you're bothered to defend Apple so vigorously. You really think they're knights on white horses? As far as I understand their primary objective is to protect their own brand and profit.

[lomatopo]

I guess there's a ton of apps. in the Market now which let you detect the presence of Carrier IQ. If present you could use app.s to freeze to processes (Titanium Back-up) or even delete the files.

I haven't stayed up on this issue as I am unaffected; it seems more Service-provider-centric rather than manufacturer-centric, but it does seem at least as insidious as the AAPL tracking issues from last year, if not more so.

[nikster]

I am not convinced the guy with the video really know what he is doing. Afaics he is just going through the event handlers on the OS, that's kinda the functional background for any OS, nothing to do specifically with CIQ. CIQ may be in there and may capture these events, but that's not what he is showing unless I misunderstood something.

He is showing how Carrier IQ logs all those events. These are not "event handlers" - they are Carrier IQ intercepts.

Meanwhile Google's own Eric Schmidt has called Carrier IQ a "key logger" - pretty harsh coming from the chairman!

Not sure what you mean by "defending Apple" - finding out facts isn't defending, I don't think. It's more like doing research. I'd have been surprised if Apple had secretly logged any data simply because they have very strict policies in place to prevent just such a thing. Google has such policies too but I can see how they'd have a much harder time enforcing these as the OS is open and open to modifications from manufacturers.