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Some major players have responded to Senator Al Franken’s questions surrounding Carrier IQ and its practices. Usage data has been revealed by AT&T and Sprint, and Samsung and HTC have disclosed figures on Carrier IQ as well. Sprint seems to be the most heavily involved with the tracking service, deploying it on over 26 million of their handsets. AT&T reports numbers much lower at 900,000 handsets, clarifying that only 575,000 are actively collecting data. The bulk of these devices can be attributed to HTC and Samsung; the companies clarified to have pre-installed the software on an estimated 6.3 million and 25 million phones respectively.
All companies involved had similar explanations for the use of Carrier IQ, stating that data is only collected as a tool for diagnosing network issues. The responses, which can be found over at Senator Franken’s website, refute claims that carriers are spying on their users. You can read the senator’s response at his website, as well.
[via BGR]
There was news today Sprint no longer collects data from carrier IQ and order all manafactures to remove carrier iq. A new ROM (EL13) leak for the Epic 4G Touch and it has no carrier iq on it, which previously did.
this is so wrong, if they want to do network diagnostics then use specialized equipment to do that, i BOUGHT my phone, I OWN it, my carrier will NOT piggy back on MY equipment cause they are too lazy to have their techs do maintenance and diagnostics out in the field like they should be doing.
I don’t believe this should result in a class action lawsuit, or even a federal investigation. Another instance of the government wasting time and money on minor things that in the end do no good for the public.
Carrier IQ was a known issue for well over a year, but only gained traction within the last few months. A great case of buyer beware, and for the consumer to know what is on the products they purchase.
All this is can possibly do is sink a good, but finanically failing carrier, i.e. Sprint.
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
Sounds like you’re ready for an interview with Art Bell on Coast2Coast AM :)
Yeah, they all say data is collected for whatever use they have for it. But the unanswered question remains – WHAT data is being collected?
Here’s to hoping that Carrier IQ gets sued out of business as well as every cellular carrier that installed it on devices sold to customers without their knowledge.
Verizon once again shows why they are the best. They didn’t mess with this garbage in the first place.
it came on the HTC Thunderbolt.
Just because Verizon isn’t using Carrier IQ doesn’t mean they aren’t using something similar.
Something to ponder. The Carriers, i.e. Sprint, were probably only getting the data they needed, and were probably honest in their dealing. What we know, however, is that way too much data was being sent to Carrier IQ. So, until we see more, we have to assume that Carrier IQ at the least has that data, and we have to wonder what its doing with it.
Of Course, it may come out later that all that data was passed to the carriers themselves, at which point we’d need to deal with them.
If they want only data pertaining to network stability then create an app that collects only that data.