US-Based Monitoring Software Provides for 150 Million Mobile Phones
To 150 million mobile phones could be observed worldwide, such as mobile devices “are used every day,” reported the U.S. company in October CarrierIQ proud. CarrierIQ then joined into a partnership with market researchers Nielsen. Should analyze the data using the CarrierIQ that make consumers experience with their smartphones and tablets – CarrierIQ operative as a “unique source of knowledge.”
As far as the knowledge gained from this unique source, the system administrator Trevor explores Eckhart from Connecticut. The young man is also developing applications for Android smartphones, and met with the work on the software CarrierIQ. The program was installed on a HTC device that Eckhart studied. The software is installed by manufacturers or wireless carriers to ship products in front of them for sale to customers.
The results of the previous Eckhart Analyses are disturbing. The well-camouflaged and has not for lay people and certainly do not want to disable monitoring software to be uninstalled from CarrierIQ According to the developer access to sensitive information.
Trevor Eckhart says that the software CarrierIQ examined by him on the Android smartphone …
- … Has access to keyboard input.
- … Can see what sites he calls the browser.
- … Can read along with an encrypted SSL access to the Google search, typing in that search.
- … Can read details of the login string, resulting from the application at the payment service PayPal.
- … Is entitled to SMS messages, location information, access the address book and sent text messages and even phone calls.
How to access the client installation on the CarrierIQ these data, Eckhart tries in a second article based on teaching material from CarrierIQ understand. The conclusion of the developer:
“To appear on the site maintenance for equipment numbers or customer numbers. The administrators can group the devices into groups, for example, to see which devices in California by five clock in the evening, the network connections are broken.” However, observing that the evaluator transmitted from phones data also show this: “to analyze instead of broken network connections in California, one could also see where Mr. XY was on a certain day, which runs on a mobile device, which buttons he pushes and which applications he uses. ”
CarrierIQ: “We are seeing many aspects of device performance”
CarrierIQ denies that the software can be used to log keystrokes. The company announced the software would benefit from equipment manufacturers and network operators installed on mobile devices in order to “improve the network quality and analyzing problems with devices.”
The company says it observed “many aspects of device performance,” but does not draw “keystrokes” and also offer a function to “tracking” of individual devices. All information requested by the terminals would be “encrypted and secured” in the networks of customers in CarrierIQ CarrierIQ or self-administered.
In an interview with ” Wired “said marketing director Andrew CarrierIQ Coward, his company do not read the text message:” We count things How many text messages you have sent, how many could not be sent.. ” On the issue of “Wired” editor, CarrierIQ whether the software could theoretically read text messages on the telephones, Coward said: “probably yes”.
Manufacturers HTC refers to mobile phone companies
Which suppliers installing the software on their devices CarrierIQ is unclear. An overview:
- According to HTC devices are not shipped by the manufacturer in Europe with CarrierIQ software. The situation in the United States refers HTC on the network operators. “HTC is not a customer or partner of CarrierIQ, we do not receive data from this application, the firm or the network operators who cooperate with CarrierIQ HTC is looking for ways to give customers an option to disable to provide the data collection by the CarrierIQ application. ”
- Samsung Germany has indicated that on mobile phones sold in Germany at the manufacturer’s CarrierIQ software is not preinstalled.
- According to the chpwn iPhone hackers can be found on iPhone is a version of CarrierIQ software, this is but disabled by default. Apple refers to a statement from the U.S. parent company: So has Apple with version 5 of the operating system IOS integration of CarrierIQ software stopped that they wanted in a future version to remove the program completely.
- Nokia denies the use of the software: “CarrierIQ does not deliver products for Nokia devices.”
German mobile operators want to ask manufacturers
In Germany, the software at the big mobile operators are not in use:
- T-Mobile does not use the software claims to Carrier IQ. Whether and in what firmware comes with several terminal manufacturers to use this software, you can not say. To clarify this, T-Mobile wants to ask the business partners, “extensively informed about implemented applications.”
- Also O2 is considering whether to install equipment supplied by manufacturers of such software. A spokeswoman says: “According to our knowledge, no customer data is transmitted to us.”
- Vodafone Germany uses a loud speaker “CarrierIQ and other diagnostic software does not.”
- A spokesman for the E-Plus Group says that the company and the software CarrierIQ comparable diagnostic software does not use.
- The freenet group (Debitel / Mobilcom / clear cell / mobile call) has not answered.
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