Tracking Software Caught Snooping on Millions of Smartphones

If you could think up the most hyperbolic intrusion of privacy rights, what would it be? How about hidden software on millions of smartphones that records every interaction a user has with the device, as well as his location, then sends that information off the phone in a totally unencrypted way without letting the user know? And what if the manufacturer of the phone installed it, and you couldn?t uninstall it?

Well, according to a video released by Connecticut-based security expert Trevor Eckhart, this is exactly what is happening right now with millions of recent Android, Nokia, and RIM Blackberry devices. A company called Carrier IQ claims its monitoring software is installed on 140 million devices, and it is embedded at the root level, deep in the operating system, so that most customers are unaware that it exists on their phones and would have no idea when it is running.

A Forbes report on the issue quotes former Justice Department prosecutor Paul Ohm as saying that Carrier IQ?s software is "very likely a federal wiretap," which could give millions of users grounds to sue the company for heavy damages. In fact, given that this software is installed by the manufacturers and is in communication with the carriers, that could expose some very big companies to potential lawsuits based on their complicity.

Nokia has denied that it uses Carrier IQ on its devices, and Verizon has stated that it also does not use the software. Carrier IQ has posted a statement on its site claiming that its software is ". . . counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools." Further, they claim that the information from devices ". . . is encrypted and secured within our customer?s network or in our audited and customer-approved facilities." Yet both those statements run contrary to what Eckhart displays in his video. That seems to leave three possibilities: Eckhart is wrong, Carrier IQ is lying, or?perhaps most disturbing?Carrier IQ doesn?t even understand the extent of what its own software is doing.

When customers sign up with a carrier, they agree to terms of service that stipulates the carrier can collect some degree of information about how they use the phone (indeed, some degree of customer-usage monitoring is critical to the basic operation of networks). So there is, perhaps, some question as to whether this monitoring could be legally protected by those agreements. But Eckhart points out that Carrier IQ?s software records keystrokes even when the cellular antenna is turned off in airplane mode, or when the device is communicating over a private WiFi network.

According to Forbes, Carrier IQ actually attempted to shut down Eckhart?s research by sending him a cease-and-desist notice, but lawyers from the privacy rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation intervened. Whatever the case, if Ohm is right about the federal wiretapping allegation, then we expect to see a litany of litigation, reactionary legislation, and PO?d customers who have just about had enough of constant digital snooping.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/tracking-software-caught-snooping-on-millions-of-smartphone-users-6606335?src=rss

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