By Researcher Trevor Eckhart has found software that tracks activity on smartphones such as Android, Blackberry and Nokia devices. The software belongs to Carrier IQ and it was exposed by Eckhart in an online video. After the video became available to Internet surfers, the California-based company starting defending the software saying that it was a useful tool for carrier operators.
Carrier IQ said in a press statement that “Our software is designed to help mobile network providers diagnose critical issues that lead to problems such as dropped calls and battery drain”. In addition, the company denied tracking phone owners or even logging keystrokes. However, Trevor Eckhart showed in its video that the software does otherwise.
In the video, the software, which is buried very deep in the smartphone, logging every single keystroke, text messages, locations and even queries for Internet searches. After the researcher wrote the message ‘Hello world!’ on the phone, it appeared almost instantly on a Carrier IQ app log in an Android-powered smartphone. Also, the software was really hard to find on the phone and, according to the researcher’s demonstration, it could not be turned off.
Even though Carrier IQ attempted to force Trevor Eckhart to keep this for himself with a letter that threatened him it would have to deal with legal action, lawyers at Electronic Frontier Foundation came in his defense. This meant that Carrier IQ had to back down.
Senior attorney Marcia Hoffman from EFF said in a response for the letter that “Mr. Eckhart’s legitimate and truthful research is sheltered by both the fair use doctrine and the First Amendment.”
The questions Eckhart had, were regarding the reason Carrier IQ was using this snooping smartphone software and who did it share the data collected with.
