Carrier IQ Spyware Is Logging Everything You Do On Your Smart Phone Without Your Permission!

What is Carrier IQ and why should you care?  First, I'll start by saying you SHOULD care because it's an invasion of your privacy!  Moving on, Carrier IQ is "spyware" that logs what you do on your smart phone.  We all have secrets be it big or small, and a lot of them are on our I-Phones or Androids.  And our secrets are no longer secrets which has completely flipped my lid!

Right now Carrier IQ is hard at work on your phone.  Logging every single key stroke you make, including those drunk texts you sent the other night.  It's tracking your activities, like the secret pictures you sent your lover the other day.  It's tracking your mobile phone internet habits, like the porn sites you so frequent.  Basically, it's keeping track of everything you do on your phone so that a company can make big bucks to provide valuable research information to corporations.  Information you are not giving them permission to have access to!

(Washington Post)

Carrier IQ is an analytics program for mobile devices that advertises to carriers that it can “measure performance and user experience with no visible impact to your customers.” Eckhart, using his own HTC device, found that the program not only records information about app activity and battery life but also notes when users press any key on the phone and records text messages. He said the data is transmitted back to Carrier IQ’s servers.

Which is funny, because the company Carrier IQ itself released a statement saying that it didn't do any of this!

That seems to contradict a statement from Carrier IQ, which clearly said that it doesn’t record keystrokes. The company also said it does not provide tracking tools, inspect or report the content of communications or provide real-time data reporting to its customers.

Is any phone safe from the software?  Curious to know if it's on your phone?

Eckhart has said there is evidence of the program in Android and BlackBerry devices; the program cannot be turned off without rooting the phone, he said.

Other researchers have found evidence of Carrier IQ in Apple devices.

“[Up] through and including iOS 5, Apple has included a copy of Carrier IQ on the iPhone,” wrote security researcher Grant Paul on his blog. He said that the program appears to be controlled by the “Diagnositcs and Usage” setting on Apple devices, meaning that it appears users can disable the program on those phones. He wrote that he’s “reasonably sure that it has no access” to text messages, browsing history or Web history.

In a Twitter message, Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said that the program is not present on any Verizon devices; Nokia has made a similar statement to The Verge.

In a statement, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel confirmed that AT&T uses the software.

However, a statement about Blackberry's was released earlier today, basically saying they don't allow the program to carry on the devices.

RIM does not pre-install the Carrier IQ app on BlackBerry smartphones or authorize its carrier partners to install the Carrier IQ app before sales or distribution," RIM said.