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Carrier iQ Goes Under, AT&T Buys Assets and Staff (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: You may recall a company called CarrierIQ from when it angered tech-savvy internet users four years ago. They developed software that allowed explicit monitoring of anything happening on a cell phone, down to individual keystrokes. It was pre-installed on millions of phones at the time, and Carrier iQ unsuccessfully tried to silence the researchers working to uncover it. As the article notes, the company and its software "became synonymous with creepy, unseen monitoring of everything that you do on a smartphone on behalf of carriers and phone makers." Well, it seems they never really recovered. Carrier iQ seems to have evaporated. The bad news is that they sold most of their assets to AT&T, and handed off some employees as well. AT&T says they've continued to use Carrier iQ's software over the past few years to "improve the customer's network and wireless service experience."
Glad to see these.
...Buys Assets and Staff...
How does that work exactly?
Either they bought the company, in which case the employees – who are not slaves – may elect to stay on.
Or they extended job offers...
Or is this just sloppy journalism?
The real bad news is that Carrier IQ is the like Netscape. Nobody buys it anymore because the functionality it offers comes included 'free' with every damn phone.
Surveillance and spying is the norm nowadays.
https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-why-the-close-collaboration-between-the-nsa-and-att-matters
That is a lie perpetrated by a brother to keep the man down!
Amass all copies of all the IP in place, and BURN it.
Force staff to sign ironclad NDAs promising never to reveal the evil ways or their former employer.
Publicise publc service provided. Amass goodwill, try not to burn that.
...I needed yet another reason to stay away from AT&T.
"became synonymous with creepy, unseen monitoring of everything that you do on a smartphone on behalf of carriers and phone makers." Well, it seems they never really recovered. Carrier iQ seems to have evaporated. The bad news is that they sold most of their assets to AT&T, and handed off some employees as well. AT&T says they've continued to use Carrier iQ's software over the past few years to "improve the customer's network and wireless service experience."
So now AT&T should be synonymous with creepy, unseen monitoring of everything that you do on an AT&T smartphone on behalf of AT&T.
AT&T, the company which said "Hey NSA, please come in and install your own equipment to violate the basic human rights of millions of peoples' communications running through our trunks".
Anyone who would ever consider conducting business with the company has a serious problem. It would be like happily conducting business with the company that made Zyklon B.
I'll stick to my nice dumb flip-phone that wasn't ever in the posession of AT&T in the first place, that they know nothing about, thank you very much. Truth be told I hate AT&T anyway, but it's just too much of a pain in the ass to switch carriers, and anyway they're all at least as bad.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I wonder if anyone is foolish enough to consider their cellphone secure? I assume the bastard is hacked and reporting everything I do and where I am and who I'm talking to at all times. If I ever considered doing anything illegal I'd certainly leave the damn thing at home.
It could monitor keystrokes, apps run, contacts, SMSs, audio, video....
It was included in all handsets by requirement from ATnT and the other NSA stooges.
A control file could be sent to any phone to spy on anyone in detail and without any warrant.
It was included in Apple's iPhone too but at least that could be turned off.
Similar software *IS* included in all Android handsets, different vendors call it different things: e.g. Samsungs is called DSMLawmo
It can take control of the phone vi the GSM channel, it can turn on mic+video, read ALL data, send SMS's pretending to be you, add numbers to the address book, add new accounts, change bluetooth settings, even run Sysscope.
It's claimed to be there for "support" reasons, but you can never disable it.
Windows 10, on the other hand gives up any pretense of support, it sends everything, voice, keystrokes, handwriting, address book, all your private stuff to Microsoft for 'Cortana', and it does that even in privacy mode.... oh and it also sends you disk encryption keys to a PRISM server.
Undoubtedly this is for government monitoring. When the government requests it they can no doubt secretly command your phone to download this app.
Are they trying to catch up to Verizon, and the much swept-under-the-rug Super Cookie?
does this lurk inside ATT's Mark This Spot?
Where's that public-private fascism, err, synergy, when you need it? Ok, not you, or me. Where was I? I would have thought, one of the US three-letter agencies, NSA / FBI / DEA / BATFE / CIA, would have created a shell company to buy CarrierIQ and continue developing the spyware.
I would hunt down and kill any CEO doing that to me.