If you haven’t been paying attention, a service called Carrier IQ has cause a bit of a stir lately. The premise is pretty simple. Manufacturers or carriers install the software on your phone. The software then monitors pretty much everything you do, and then reports back to the installing party. Clearly this causes some issues with users; no one wants someone spying on their actions. In the past few days carriers and manufacturers have spoken up regarding their relationships with Carrier IQ. The latest is Sprint, which admitted that it uses Carrier IQ. Does this make you feel less easy about using a Sprint Android phone?
Sprint claims that it uses the data collected by Carrier IQ to “analyze our network performance and identify where we should be improving service.” In that way it’s something like a SCADA, wherein the company is trying to manage its network by gathering as much data as possible. Of course, Sprint has available to it all sorts of other data via Carrier IQ, and their marketing department will likely benefit greatly from it. Will they simply not use the data that they receive — that they pay for — because there has been something of a controversy? Call me a skeptic, but I don’t think it will.
Via The Verge.
