nCircle Sync Blog: December 2011 Archives

Lately there's much a lot of hand wringing in the press about Carrier IQ, a software monitoring and tool for wireless carriers. Carrier IQ is reportedly facing a federal probe over allegations that its monitoring software collected smartphone data and transmitted it to carriers without consumers' knowledge.

Carrier IQ has been playing defense. They released a detailed report that shows exactly which types of data its software collects, and pointed out that all data points are selected by carriers, and that any data collected data is shared only with the relevant carrier.
In spite of this, Apple and Sprint just announced that they have disabled Carrier IQ software on their handsets.

The bad news in this situation is that we still don't know for sure what kind of data Carrier IQ is capable of collecting or what carriers are doing with it. And just because some carriers have recently disabled it doesn't mean they won't turn it back on at some point in the future. Carrier IQ may not be the only option available for carriers that want to monitor handsets either, they may just be this week’s privacy scapegoat.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that if IQ can gather detailed, private data from users, then we're all in the same boat because, until very recently, it's been on nearly every device.

If you have a handset that is likely to include Carrier IQ software remember that panic at this point is pointless and probably premature.

Everyone in the Carrier IQ value chain is going to have to answer some very detailed questions from the FTC and/or the FCC in the near future and until then all consumers can do is wait.

Meanwhile, though, Carrier IQ's website claims to have their software installed on over 141 million handsets (and still counting).