Carrier IQ controversy - keylogger on 141 million smartphones?

Posted on Wednesday, November 30 2011 @ 22:10 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
TechCrunch reports about the Carrier IQ controversy, a smartphone app that is capable of detecting, recording, and transmitting various user actions and inputs. Full details over here and here. According to Carrier IQ's own website, its software is pre-installed on over 141 million smartphones.
You may be aware of the growing controversy surrounding Carrier IQ, a piece of software found pre-installed on Sprint phones that, according to developers who have investigated, is capable of detecting, recording, and transmitting various user actions and inputs. Among the data CIQ potentially has access to are location, SMS, apps, and key presses.

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A couple grains of salt are suggested. First, while Eckhart has no reason to falsify this information, it’s possible that this debug log is not entirely accurate for technical reasons, or that the conclusions are only applicable to this handset or software version. Second, this log does not prove that any of this information is actually being transmitted to any third party.

However, the fact that CIQ is in fact seeing all this information means that it has access to it and could very easily record it and transmit it.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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