[olug] [OT]: Researcher’s Video Shows Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything

[Dan Linder]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 16:19, Kevin D. Snodgrass <kdsnodgrass at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/secret-software-logging-video/
> Anyone with an Android, BlackBerry or Nokia phone might want to root it and destroy "Carrier IQ"....

I agree that the carriers don't need to load up the phones that we're
purchasing through their rent-to-own agreement, but thinking that this
is new is off the mark.  Back when we had StarTAC phones or even bag
phones, the carriers still had a lot of information about us that most
of us wouldn't expect...

>From what I understand, the "Carrier IQ" tool is the electronic
version of the Verizion guy who says "Can you hear me now?"  Each time
your phone drops a call, gets a high rate of errors, etc, this tool
logs that information and will upload it to the carrier as an
additional datapoint for their coverage team to use.

The conspiracy theory side of me says "Yeah, but what else?" and it
may be true.  Sadly we might never know unless it was made FOSS.

Dan

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