Software from Carrier IQ is allegedly being used to track as many as 100 million smartphones to find out sensitive details about owners, according to news reports. Fox News said the software even reveals when phone owners log “individual keystrokes” or make “button presses.”

The allegations come from Trevor Eckhart – an Android developer. But Carrier IQ responded that the software “is intended to help carriers monitor and evaluate network quality” and can “improve the quality and the user experience.”

“Our software is designed to help mobile network providers diagnose critical issues that lead to problems such as dropped calls and battery drain,” Carrier IQ claims in a press statement. The company also claims in the press statement that it does “not sell Carrier IQ data to third parties.”

The company has already apologized both to Eckhart and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“Eckhart showed [this week] how software developed by Carrier IQ tracks virtually everything a user does,” Fox News said. “The company claims it helps its customers improve quality and performance ‘by counting and measuring operational information in mobile devices.’ Security experts call it spyware.”

“Eckhart … said the company's software detects every button pressed, every text message sent, every website browsed to,” Fox News adds.

Meanwhile, the allegation has raised the concern of legal experts and at least one U.S. Senator.

“If CarrierIQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very [like] a federal wiretap,” Paul Ohm, who teaches law at the University of Colorado, told Forbes magazine.

In addition, Eckhardt said the Carrier IQ software was essentially a “rootkit.” Rootkits may describe “malware, spyware or other malicious software that goes undetected by users,” according to TechZone360.  

“If the software is doing what the company claims, there shouldn't be any issue. If Eckhardt's findings are correct, however, and Carrier IQ is monitoring smartphones without informing their owners, that may be grounds for a class-action lawsuit based on a federal wiretapping law,” Fox News adds.

AT&T and Sprint said their smartphones have Carrier IQ software preinstalled, according to news reports. HTC and Samsung also have it on their phones, news reports add. It is also possible Apple phones may have Carrier IQ installed.

Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken (D, Minn.) wrote to Carrier IQ CEO Larry Lenhart to clarify what’s going on. “Consumers need to know that their safety and privacy are being protected by the companies they trust with their sensitive information,” Franken said in a press statement. “The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling.”

“These revelations are especially concerning in light of Carrier IQ’s public assertions that it is ‘not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools’ …, ‘[d]oes not record your keystrokes,’ and ‘[d]oes not inspect or report on the content of your communications, such as the content of emails and SMSs …,’” Franken said in the letter sent to Lenhart.

To download Eckhart’s video on the issue, please click here. The video is just the latest twist in the conflict between Eckhart and Carrier IQ, which began months ago, commented TechZone360’s Beecher Tuttle.


Ed Silverstein is a TechZone360 contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell