CarrierIq
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AT&T acquires parts of phone-monitoring company Carrier IQ
Carrier IQ came under scrutiny in 2011 as the public learned about its practices of capturing the user data on more than 140 million mobile devices. The company logged where and when people made calls or sent text messages, which apps they used, how they used the web and other mobile habits, and it was employed by major carriers including Sprint, Apple, AT&T and HTC. Now, in a post-Snowden world, Carrier IQ appears to have shut down, and AT&T has picked up its software and some staff, a spokesperson tells TechCrunch.
HTC settles with the FTC over claims of insecurities in logging software
Much of the firestorm surrounding remote phone diagnostics in late 2011 ultimately enveloped Carrier IQ and the providers that used it, but HTC was also scorched by accusations that its phones' software flaws (including in HTC Loggers) made privacy breaches possible. The FTC went so far as to level charges against the company for allegedly not doing enough to secure software. That saga may be winding to a close now that HTC's American division has agreed to settle the whole affair. The smartphone designer has to do more than just deliver patches, which it already has -- it's now required to run a "comprehensive" security program to weed out flaws in advance, and it will be the subject of outside assessments every other year for the next 20 years. As tough as those conditions may seem, they're easier than dealing with fines or stiffer penalties. They'll hopefully prevent repeats of any privacy scares as well, even if the real-world risk has been slight.
Carrier IQ gives its remote smartphone diagnosing tool a global release
Carrier IQ has let customer service reps diagnose smartphones from afar with its IQ Care software for a while, but now the solution has been given a worldwide release. By wielding IQ Care (and asking a phone owner's permission, we're assured), technicians can see device-specific stats such as a battery's drain rate, percentage of app failures, frequency of dropped calls and more. The outfit hopes that its software will make support calls shorter and ensure that fewer fully-functioning devices aren't misdiagnosed and returned needlessly. As of now, however, there isn't any word on which networks or hardware manufacturers will join the metric-hungry flock.
Refresh Roundup: week of September 17th, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Carrier IQ hires former Verizon privacy counsel Magnolia Mobley as Chief Privacy Officer
It's been several months since Carrier IQ explained its data collection practices and responded to FCC and Senatorial inquiry about its privacy policies. Despite the fact that it's no longer in the headlines, Carrier IQ's still intent on improving how it handles consumer info. That's why the firm has hired Magnolia Mobley away from Verizon (who eschewed Carrier IQ's services in favor of its own Remote Diagnostics tool), where she was Big Red's Chief Privacy Counsel. Ms. Mobely will be Carrier IQ's General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer and she's expected to help the company focus on preserving consumer privacy. You can read up on her credentials further in the PR after the break.
Refresh Roundup: week of April 2nd, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Carrier IQ opens up IQCare diagnostics platform to smartphone users
Carrier IQ has announced the extension of its IQ Care platform to enable mobile operators to share the insight gained with its customers. The analytics software measures diagnostic information on your phone relating to network usage, battery life and dropped calls. Previously it's only been available to customer care agents as they remotely diagnose your phone during a support call, but the platform is now being opened up so that data can be viewable on open customer service portals. It's hoped that people will learn how to resolve network issues, the company remarking that 40 percent of smartphones are returned, only to be found not to have any faults at all. It'll launch in the second quarter of the year and you can find out a whole heap more if you head on past the break.
Refresh Roundup: week of February 20th, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Refresh Roundup: week of January 30, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Vlingo co-founder explains data-collection issues
With Carrier IQ and O2's most recent data-snooping, people's vigilance about what information cellphones transmit is increasing. Using a Galaxy Note, AndroidPit found that every four minutes, Vlingo's voice-recognition app was sending a packet of data to an unencrypted server. The packet contained your GPS co-ordinates, IMEI (unique device identifier), contact list and the title of every song stored on your device -- without proper warning in the privacy policy you agree to when starting up the app. We spoke with co-founder John Wynn, product marketing head TJ Leonard and communications manager Erin Keleher, who gave us a full and frank discussion about what's going on and the steps it's taking to remedy the situation, which we've got for you after the break.
Refresh Roundup: week of January 16, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery from the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
HTC EVO 3D: poof, no more Carrier IQ software
It's been exactly a month since we received word that Sprint was disabling Carrier IQ software installed on its carrier-branded devices, and this week we witnessed a firmware update on the HTC EVO 3D that quietly removes all traces of the tracking software completely. Neither company was forthcoming about this particular feature disappearing -- we have a hunch they're trying to keep the public from being reminded that CIQ ever happened -- but Android Central discovered that both the HTC IQAgent and IQRD were completely gone after the update. So add this to the list of the build's other performance enhancements, and here's to hoping that we'll start seeing a plethora of other devices getting similar releases.
Tech's biggest misfires of 2011
The past 12 months have been a boon of technological innovation, particularly in the world of mobile devices, where top companies have been waging an arms race for the top of the smartphone and tablet hills. Not everything has been smooth sailing, however -- 2011 has also been dotted by delays, false starts, security breeches and straight up technological turf outs. Check out some of the lowlights from the year that was after the break.
Pantech Pocket review
Hundreds of smartphones of all shapes, sizes and colors pass through the doors of Engadget HQ every year, so it's natural for a few oddball devices with crazy form factors to end up in our hands from time to time. The Motorola Flipout, LG DoublePlay, Kyocera Echo and Samsung DoubleTime are all instances of carriers trying something new, seeing what sticks. Of course, pushing out a phone with an unproven form factor is a huge gamble for a mobile provider, and as a result they only ship to stores in low volume and rarely receive any kind of marketing campaign at its launch. Indeed, the vast majority of these types of phones are low-end devices aimed at young adults and first-time smartphone buyers, but we still find it adventurous to take a break from the monotony of black slabs and try out something completely different. The Pantech Pocket is definitely unique -- not because it flips or slides a weird way or because it has two and a half screens, but because its 4-inch display, whose 4:3 aspect ratio promises 20 percent more horizontal real estate. Did AT&T's gamble on the display pay off? Is it worth the $50 that AT&T demands with a two-year commitment attached? Time to find out below. %Gallery-142128%
EFF takes the fight to Carrier IQ, requests reinforcements
If we didn't love the EFF already, we'd be proposing marriage now that it's managed to reverse-engineer Carrier IQ's pernicious monitoring software. CIQ exists in phones in three parts, the app itself, a configuration file and a database -- where your keystrokes and coded "metrics" are logged before being sent to the company. Volunteer Jared Wierzbicki cracked the configuration profile and produced IQIQ, an Android app that reveals what parts of your activity are being monitored. Now the Foundation is posting an open call for people to share their data using the app in order to decipher what personal data was collected and hopefully decrypt the rest of the software. Hopefully, our thoughts can soon turn to who's gonna play the part of Trevor Eckhart in the All the Presidents Men-style biopic.
T-Mobile, Motorola respond to Senator Franken's Carrier IQ questions
The deadline has passed for T-Mobile and Motorola to respond to Senator Al Franken's Carrier IQ questionnaire, and both companies' reports are in. We'll first tackle T-Mobile's letter: the carrier stated that it began installing CIQ last August, and nearly 450,000 Android and BlackBerry devices are infested with the IQ Agent software, which is used for individual troubleshooting cases and marketing purposes. This is a more moderate use than Sprint or AT&T, which both mentioned that it was actively pinging their CIQ-enabled phones to collect data on service and wireless performance on their networks. Nine T-Mobile devices in total contain the IQ Agent: the HTC Amaze 4G, Samsung Galaxy S II and Exhibit II 4G, LG MyTouch and MyTouchQ, LG DoublePlay and the BlackBerry 9900, 9810 and 9360. Motorola, meanwhile, admitted that CIQ is installed on four of its devices: the Admiral, Titanium, Bravo and Atrix 2. While this rounds up all of the companies that were asked by Senator Franken to respond, we're still anxious to see what kind of effect this will have. We've already witnessed one major change, as Sprint's agreed to disable the software on its phones, but who's next? Where do we go from here?
Senator Al Franken asks about Carrier IQ, the companies answer: the complete breakdown
Two weeks ago, smack-dab in the middle of the CarrierIQ saga, Senator Al Franken pounded his fist on the table and demanded answers. He wanted to know what CarrierIQ is all about and why several US mobile providers and manufacturers felt the need to install potentially invasive software on the phones of unsuspecting consumers. Senator Franken sent Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, Samsung, HTC and Motorola a series of thirteen questions each, trying to get to the bottom of what each company is doing with the mysterious software. So far, all but T-Mobile and Motorola have complied with the Senator's wishes, as the two remaining companies were given until December 20th to have their responses submitted (we'll update this post as those are made public). As we reported previously, the Senator wasn't all too pleased by what the companies had to say. But what exactly is found in these pages and pages of documents? A few answers, and some more questions. We have pored through each company's letter, so follow us below as we break down their responses to each of the Senator's queries. Note: The level of involvement by the government seems to be making an impact, as Sprint is now disabling all Carrier IQ software on its devices so that data cannot be collected anymore. Its response to Senator Franken, however, should not be discounted as it provides insight into why the carrier's been a "valued customer" of CIQ's since 2006, and how it's been using the data it has collected over the past five years. Read on!
Mobile Miscellany: week of December 12, 2011
This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here's some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of December 12, 2011:
Sprint says it has disabled Carrier IQ on its devices
Sprint may have stood by its use of Carrier IQ on its smartphones when the furor over the software erupted a couple of weeks back -- while insisting all along that it was only used for network diagnostic purposes -- but it's now apparently had a change of heart. In a statement to Mobile Burn, Sprint says that it has "weighed customer concerns and we have disabled use of the tool so that diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected," adding that it's now "further evaluating options regarding this diagnostic software as well as Sprint's diagnostic needs." The carrier also reasserted that it has never used the software to examine users' personal information, and that it hasn't been used for targeted advertising or profiling customers. As Mobile Burn notes, however, while the software has been "disabled," it's not yet clear if that means it will actually be removed with a future software update, or not installed on new handsets.
Senator Al Franken gets answers regarding CarrierIQ, still not satisfied
It's been two weeks since the CarrierIQ story caught the eye of Senator Al Franken, who swiftly put his fist down and began demanding answers from the companies that admitted to allowing the tracking software on their handsets, as well as CarrierIQ itself. The deadline for the companies to respond is over for all but two -- T-Mobile and Motorola were both given until December 20th -- and the good Senator's had the chance to look over their questionnaires. Here's what Sen. Franken had to say about what he read: I appreciate the responses I received, but I'm still very troubled by what's going on... People have a fundamental right to control their private information. After reading the companies' responses, I'm still concerned that this right is not being respected. The average user of any device equipped with Carrier IQ software has no way of knowing that this software is running, what information it is getting, and who it is giving it to -- and that's a problem. It appears that Carrier IQ has been receiving the contents of a number of text messages -- even though they had told the public that they did not. I'm also bothered by the software's ability to capture the contents of our online searches-even when users wish to encrypt them. So there are still many questions to be answered here and things that need to be fixed. Kind of makes you wonder exactly how each company answered the Senator's questions, right? Wonder no longer, our curious friends -- the responses in their fullness can be found on Senator Franken's website, linked below. In addition, tune in tomorrow when we'll dive into the responses in-depth. There's one question that we still want answered, though: what will each company do about the matter, now that it's caught public scrutiny? Our bet is on "not much."
