And, again, your original post claimed that carrier iq can see everything that a user does on iOS. That appears to be false from the information that has been published so far. That is the main concern with the Android version.
Actually, Carrier IQ would almost certainly capture the same information on all phones. That's its purpose, after all. The
only difference is that we can see their debug statements on some. That's all.
Folks, CarrierIQ looks at all keystrokes for the simple purpose of watching for a special sequence to put it into a test mode. They're not uploaded anywhere. This is no different than the way that current iPhone software looks for general field test mode, or a Blackberry watches for special sequences to show its log or change the status bars to signal level.
Likewise, CarrierIQ looks at all incoming texts, watching for the special ones that tell it to send its diagnostic info (NOT the developer debug log). If it doesn't see the special text, it doesn't care about it. Again, no different than the way most phones look for special remote disabling or other control messages.
Ok, it's not spyware. It's just an app where people have some or all of their actions logged for diagnostic purposes.
Yes, but let's be clear: for carrier diagnostic purposes, the actions logged are very general. As in, a text was sent with signal strength so-and-so.
The other logging that made the news was NOT the CarrierIQ diagnostic log. It was a common debug log for developers, that rolls fairly often and is cleared on reset.
Spyware is (generally) used for stealing purposes, but I think diagnostic is stealing if the carrier uses this information for traffic shaping, for example. There are uses where "diagnostic" can be seen as stealing. Hence, taking into account that customers were not informed of this "feature" when they bought their phones, this is very similar - if not the same thing - to a spyware.
Almost every complicated device we own has some kind of diagnostics built in. Just look at your cable modem logs sometime. Most people don't know about these things, nor need to.
Most people are not "informed" that their new cars log their driving, either. Yet that information stored in our engine computers has been used to convict street racers and even a priest who lied about not knowing he was involved in a hit-and-run.
I think everyone is ignoring the part where Apple was using it for diagnostic purposes (not logging keypresses or things of that nature) and only if you explicitly enabled it. There was no sneaking and the only things logged are not nefarious according to all the information known (in fact the logs are easily accessible).
Every carrier that includes it is only using it for diagnostic purposes.
However, I think the fact that it's included is a throwback to the days of the carriers owning all equipment and thus feeling it's okay to include diagnostics. Today is a new world, with less trust of corporations, and more ignorance about how things work, so they need to adapt. I'd bet that this was covered in some user agreement, though.
