It’s going to be a long time before everyone forgets the stunt Carrier IQ pulled by secretly loading its tracking software on mobile devices and kicking it back to carriers. It still baffles me how a company like this can easily be turned upside down by the voice of one developer. It’s a constant reminder to me that on the web, we all have a voice. In further Carrier IQ news, HTC has jumped on board and pledges to remove the software from all of its CDMA handsets as we’ve seen with the HTC Evo 3D, one of the devices reported as definitely housing the software. The monitoring software will slowly but surely be removed from all of the company’s devices as per a statement by HTC:
“HTC can confirm that we’re working with Sprint to provide maintenance releases that will remove Carrier IQ and provide security enhancements and bug fixes beginning in January”
So there you have it. After this month, there should no longer be any personal user-information periodically being sent back to any specific carrier without the knowledge or consent of the subscriber. According to their site, Carrier IQ offers a number of “tiers” of monitoring and tracking when it comes to how the device functions on a specific network and not so much “personal user” interaction. However, in the manner of which the company went about preloading the software on handsets, bigger guns like Senator Al Franken was already engaging FBI directors on its usage (see video below). Let us know what you think in the comments section. And don’t forget, if you’re not sure whether or not your device has Carrier IQ’s software on it, you can use the Carrier IQ Detector app from Look Out labs here.
[via The Verge]
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