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I’ve never understood the blindness of companies that lets them do stuff like Carrier IQ is doing, especially in this day and age of almost instant information.
For those that might have been hiding under a rock in the past week and don’t know what, or who, Carrier IQ is here’s the short version.
Carrier IQ has a software package that can be installed on mobile smartphone at the root level of the phone – meaning it is undetectable for the most part, unless you are an extremely talented security programmer, and can be used to log everything you do on the phone, and then send that information back to whoever wants it – in this case it would be either the carriers or handset makers; or both.
This is all done without you knowing that it is being done, or that everything you do on the smartphone is being recorded.
For the past week or so since the news first broke much of the uproar has be pretty well centered in the United States, but that looks to be changing if the report at Engadget is any indication. It seems that European regulators are now getting in on the act with both the British Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Consumer’s Organization are starting to looking into Carrier IQ activities and software.
The British Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Consumers’ Organization have both started looking into the diagnostics software, while the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection has specifically engaged with Apple over its inclusion of parts of Carrier IQ’s suite in iOS. This, of course, comes only days after US lawmakers requested their own government open an investigation. So far, all of the major British providers have denied using the tool on their handsets but, the drama is still unfolding and there’s plenty of time for others to get caught up in this mess.
