Carrier IQ releases a statement clearing their name from surveillance scandal

Carrier IQ were alleged in reconnaissance activities that caused the infringement of users privacy rules and regulations. However, due to a stream of opprobrium directed at the company, they finally attempted to clear the air and moot all the rumours that
were damaging their corporate image.

In the recent report published by Carrier IQ, the company acknowledged the faux pas in their software and promised publicly that they will be rectified within days of announcement.

The report detailed the working of the software and the bugs found in it. There were a lot, the company confessed. However, first CIQ clearly mentioned the nature of their work and software, for that matter.

The CIQ software is not installed in all the handsets and they surely do not work with every operator or carrier in the US or other parts of the world. The patch comes preinstalled in some handsets by ‘mistake’, as they say. It is installed in operating
system in the pre-launch phase to debug the messaging service of the smartphone and carrier, it is attached to.

Moreover, the company asserted that their software is in no way keeping logs of the messages once it gets into the hands of the consumers. The stutter or malfunctioning of the messaging feature only occurs in special circumstances; when a message is received
during a call or data transfer, like browsing the web or sending receiving files via Bluetooth. Well, these are no special circumstances.

However, CIQ admitted the shortcoming on their account and stated that they will work hand-in-hand in killing the debugging system at the time of shipment. Moreover, the bug in the software that leads to data logging in ‘special circumstances’ will be corrected
within days.

Carrier IQ had been linked to smartphone surveillance by a number of technology experts. According to them, the software kept track of not only their messages but calls and the web browsing as well.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Dec 15 2011. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry