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CarrierIQ: Most Phones Ship With "Rootkit"

Posted by Unknown on from the your-keystrokes-may-be-monitored-for-qa-purposes dept.

First time accepted submitter Kompressor writes "According to a developer on the XDA forums, TrevE, many Android, Nokia, and BlackBerry smartphones have software called Carrier IQ that allows your carrier full access into your handset, including keylogging, which apps have been run, URLs that have been loaded in the browser, etc." Since this was submitted, a few more details have come to light. The software was designed to give carriers useful feedback on aggregate usage patterns, but the software runs as root and the privacy implications are pretty severe.

3 of 447 comments (clear)

  1. Re:but but but... Apple by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is the best thing that the iPhone has done for the cell phone industry. Apple doesn't bow down and let the carrier load whatever crap they want to on the phone. This makes the iPhone a much better experience, because an iPhone from Verizon is exactly the same as an iPhone from AT&T and it exactly the same as an iPhone you purchase directly from Apple. The only difference is that the carrier specific phones have been locked to that provider, but that's acceptable since you're getting the phone at a huge discount. I wish more handset makes, especially the big ones (HTC, Motorola, Nokia) would do the same to offer their customers a much better and more consistent experience.

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    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. Re:2 Questions by SmurfButcher+Bob · · Score: 5, Interesting

    3. If your lawyer has this on his (her) phone, are they in breach of confidence? What about now that they know about CIQ?
    4. If a medical *anything* has this on their phone, is this a HIPAA issue?

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    help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am

  3. Re:Doesn't Matter by Ossifer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I disagree. The very real risk (result!) is from the carriers putting crapware/spyware/etc. that you can't remove. I don't fear Google or Apple in this respect. Consider that yesterday it was revealed that Japan's largest carrier doesn't sell the iPhone precisely because Apple won't allow them to install such things.

    Secondly, I don't consider it truly open source, unless I can reasonably make changes, which you can't do with Android phones currently on the market.