“…AT&T, Sprint, HTC, and Samsung today confirmed that their mobile phones integrate a controversial piece of tracking software from a company called Carrier IQ..”
“…the software can be tweaked to gather more intrusive data about a user’s location, the software and applications on the device, which keys are being pressed and what applications are in use…”
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Both wireless carriers AT&T and Sprint insisted that the software is being used solely to improve wireless network performance while phone makers HTC and Samsung said they were integrating the software into their handsets only because their carrier customers were asking for it.
Meanwhile, several large carriers and handset makers, including Verizon, Research In Motion, and Nokia, distanced themselves from the software and insisted that reports about their devices integrating the tool are false.
The controversy began last week when independent security researcher Trevor Eckhart published a report disclosing how Carrier IQ’s software could be used by carriers and device makers to conduct surreptitious and highly intrusive tracking of Android and other smartphone users.
Eckhart described the software as a hard-to-detect and equally hard-to-remove rootkit that could be used by carriers and phone makers to collect almost any kind of data from a mobile phone without the user’s knowledge. Eckhart said his research showed that Carrier IQ’s software was often enabled to run by default on several mobile devices including those from Samsung, HTC, RIM, and others.
A lot of the information collected by Carrier IQ is designed to enable mobile operators and device vendors to quickly identify and address quality and service-related issues.
