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Sprint Disables Carrier IQ, No Longer Collecting Data

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As consumer and government concern continues to grow, Sprint has responded by disabling their servers responsible for collecting Carrier IQ data. As of Friday, the company has ceased using the tool to gather information in regards to network diagnostics. The news follows revelations by Sprint in a correspondence with Senator Al Franken that Carrier IQ has been deployed on over 26 million of their handsets.

A spokesperson for the carrier speaking to MobileBurn said, “we are further evaluating options regarding this diagnostic software as well as Sprint’s diagnostic needs.” An unconfirmed report says that Sprint has been in talks with manufacturing partners to have Carrier IQ removed from devices bound for their network.

[via MobileBurn]

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21 Comments

  1. There really is no clean phone, the problem is the way the networks
    themselves function. If every tower on the
    network looked for every phone getting a call there wouldn’t be enough
    bandwidth and would cost too much, so they track every phone real-time to see
    which towers have the best signal quality to send you your call, data, or texts.

    As long as your phone is connected to the network, your phones microphone­­,
    camera, GPS, and it’s contents are available to anyone who wants them.
    Worse yet your phone is nothing more than an open book to someone with a laptop
    and an antenna.

    We’ve spent years researchin­g the problem and have compiled a series of news
    reports that clearly lay out the problem, including the fact that turning your
    phone off doesn’t cut it said at the end of the clips by ABC, FOX, Local
    network affiliates­.

    See for yourself: http://www.Thecas­eforprivac­y.com/blog­s/news

    1. Spam spam spam spam! SPAM-A-LOT

    2. Yeah, anything you do on the internet is not private, if you are even connected to the internet than your not safe.. The more connected you are the more open you are.

  2. I’ve never really found a problem with Carrier IQ but I understand how most people are up in arms over it. I just EXPECT to be “watched” by my carrier when I use their phones, social network when I update my status and government to tap into all of the above. Not much I can do about it.. =/

    1. Why would you expect to be watched by your carrier? Do you expect to be watched by your landlord, mortgage company, or credit card companies? I hope not.

      1. My landlord is watching me… every move I swear!  

        1. been there had that, moved  haha

      2. Department of Homeland Security. Don’t believe for a second the government can’t gain access to all your forms of communication short of personally handing a note to someone. Digital information can be tracked. Doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is concerning themselves with your specific information, but i’m pretty sure if you were indicted for something Johnny Law can get a search warrant to check your phone activity.

    2. If nothing else, they’re eating up my pho-unlimited data, leading me to get throttled earlier… well not me specifically, but if I had a phone with Carrier IQ i’d be pissed off by that alone. I also think there’s a bit of a difference between the government tapping into my phone at a specific moment b/c they’re hunting me, and the carrier just collecting data to have it..

      1. Do you mean “faux” unlimited?  As in, fake or false?

  3. Wow, way to go Sprint!  Stand up for the consumer!

    1. You mean after spring put it on millions of devices?

      1. Yes.  =)

  4. lol..what do u expect…if u were caught pants down fapping u would stop anad pull your pants up and walk away…lol..im sure they willl reimplement a different vs of it under a diff name later….

  5. They say they use carrier IQ to collect data on the performance of their network, yet it hadn’t helped sprint yet. Their 3g speeds are still horribly slow

    1. thats due to their spectrum, which they are changing soon… for the spectrum they are using they handle it pretty good though, much better then ATT does with their BETTER spectrum HAHA

  6. i’m happy they stopped, however now is the time to show you mean it sprint, send out an OTA that removes it from my phone.

  7. What systems will Sprint be using to replace COW’s functionality?

  8. Sprint leading the way.  

  9. How about taking it off our phones to prove it!

  10. We still don’t even have 3g let alone 4g in my area. So my question is are the older phones going to get this removed or just the newer ones? I still rock my Moment and am very curious since I don’t see any type of update coming out for this phone ever.

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