Carrier IQ & Phone Tracking ...

pete

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
Something you've probably not heard of, unless you're a techie boy, like me. If you are a techie and haven't heard, you'd have to have been living under a rock for the past week. Here's a random article about it. Summary quote:
Carrier IQ software logs user activity and runs in the background of mobile devices.
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While this is on most mobile devices and can be difficult to disable, it's fairly easy to disable it on an iPhone/iPad/iPod. See here. You'd probably also want to upgrade to the latest software for your i-device before checking that setting. (Of course, if you've got an i-device that you got from your employer, you should talk to their IT guys, first.)

I just upgraded my (wife's) iPad 1 and turned off that setting. Took about an hour for the upgrade to the new iOS, about 3 seconds to turn off that setting ....

I also see that there are gonna be some lawsuits about the Carrier IQ thing. I'd think that some large corporations that have to be HIPAA ("healthcare privacy") and/or PCI compliant ("credit card data privacy") will also join in the fray.
 
Good thing I always buy unbranded (i.e. carrier-agnostic) phones. Of course, if it ain't your carrier, it may be Apple, or Google, who's tracking your whereabouts.
 
It's sort-of up in the air. Depending on what you read, it's something that Carrier IQ installed for its own benefit -- and it's somewhat carrier agnostic -- or it's that a bunch of carriers installed it for either good (i.e. "quality of service diagnostics") or bad (i.e. "we're tracking all your user data, including credit card numbers") purposes.

My primary purpose where I work has become computer security, mainly dealing with viruses. This Carrier IQ stuff sounds bad. We're supposed to take their word that the data they collect isn't going to be used for bad things. Sure. Right. I believe 'em. Mmm-hmm. That's the argument that a lot of malware and adware companies use. I kill off adware and malware.
 
At least my instruments don't spy on me. (I think... hope)

I don't own any iwhatnots as I've asserted before, but hearing about this just upset me, first and foremost I really feel weird being tracked. Who am I giving my important numbers, passwords, and data to, really now.
What bothers me is not the tracking itself but it's trickiness for most people to disable, and it's stealthiness, especially for the computer/device illiterate.

It really should be a strict law with severe federal punishment to track users without their consent, especially for "marketing purposes" regardless of what they are (e.g. user data collected for product innovation, or data to present behavioral advertising, etc).

For one I am not any kind of criminal so I really don't care if the government itself is tracking me, since I have nothing to hide and I doubt big brother would be eavesdropping on my personal conversations for amusement). It's the corporate industry that freaks me out a little.
 
took me probably 4+ hours to upgrade my iPod v3x software to v5x. Old apps started not working. I had over 30GB of music, video, etc on it so it took a very long time whilst the Mac did all the new iOS downloading, etc.

and I promptly turned off that feature when asked about it.
I've noticed I get really good wireless network connection now at work were it was spotty at best, and conversely battery power is getting used up much more quickly .. more power to the antenna !!

Also noticed I lost about 6GB in available storage somewhere in the upgrade ....
 
Carl H. said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vARzvWxwY&feature=share
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There's an acronym that is often used in my line of work: FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. I use this power for good, most times: I want people to have a healthy fear of viruses and other malware that's out there. Easy reason why: it makes my job easier.

(There was an online quote someplace about employee hours lost because of some techie boy -- me -- havening to fix a malware-infected machine. The average down-time was stated to be approximately 3 hours. Remember: that's average. To compute how much this costs, think of how much you get paid per hour. Multiply that by three or so and you get the rate your employer pays for you to work there; the "burdened rate." Then multiply that by two: you and me. That's a lot of money.)

Back to FUD, this Carrier IQ thing is a great example: I strongly doubt that Carrier IQ has enough manpower to drill down through all your data to mine credit card numbers, pictures of your kids, etc. and there has been and will be a lot of electronic ink about how Carrier IQ is going to steal your soul or take over the world with its data (hey, the President has a really secure Blackberry). However, I think it is probably a good idea to try to have as secure devices as possible. If you want to be COMPLETELY secure from computer baddies, never go to anyplace that has any computer at all (unfortunately, that means you probably have two stores you can shop at) and pay for everything in cash.
 
Same goes for bacteria. You can't avoid it all and it may not even be healthy to attempt to do so - but avoid at best the kinds that can harm you.

I say disable it at best - you never know what the next security breach will bring now that cIQ is publicized so heavily (especially in the techie world).
 
It's not jsut this example. Just how much information goes back and forward from your computer to software & hardware vendors?

And is there any law on disclsoure?

It's collected, sent to maker and we have to trust....

No ways I trust, but no way I can avoid without laws forcing the guys to declare what they're collecting and for waht purpose - and to allow you to opt out.

Scary when I do some nosing around on amazon, or a computer supplier site and suddenly the ads on a sax forum start pushing the products I'd just been looking at.
 
kevgermany said:
Scary when I do some nosing around on amazon, or a computer supplier site and suddenly the ads on a sax forum start pushing the products I'd just been looking at.
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Cookies are scary .. and I only thought you could buy them at the store in a package off the shelf !! lol.
I try to delete all tracking cookies.
as a matter of fact I've uninstalled my Flash web applet because it go so annoying with auto play ads. I pull up many pages at a time and to hear 3 or 5 auto play ads start up was getting annoying. On the negative side I can't hear alot of ingrained flash articles ..... i'm still not reinstalling it :) peacefullness is worth alot to me.
 
Free advice:

1. Don't use Internet Explorer. Use Google Chrome, Apple Safari or Mozilla Firefox.
2. Install and use AdBlock and FlashBlock. FB is now available for Safari, which a lot of folks are really happy about.

Of course, you could also uninstall Flash, Java, Silverlight and others, but you might end up with a plain-text website. If that's what you want, try this. I'd uninstall Silverlight and Adobe Reader and Java because they're easily accessed infection points and are otherwise potential problems, but if you uninstall Java, you break a LOT of websites.

Cookies? Good and bad. For instance, if you don't have cookies on in your browser, you can't use certain websites or things look intensely odd. However, tracking cookies can tell a website, "Hmm. He was just at 'Ed's Ballpoint Pen Emporium.' Maybe I can interest him in some ink!" They generally will not affect computer performance.
 
pete said:
Cookies? Good and bad. For instance, if you don't have cookies on in your browser, you can't use certain websites or things look intensely odd. However, tracking cookies can tell a website, "Hmm. He was just at 'Ed's Ballpoint Pen Emporium.' Maybe I can interest him in some ink!" They generally will not affect computer performance.
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For those of you who are annoyed anyway by the presence of cookies, you can also have your browser ask you whether or not you want to allow the cookie, but it's obnoxious as hell. I simply clear them out every so often.
For firefox there's also an add on called better privacy in which you can manage and delete LSO cookies (flash cookies) which are harder to destroy, can "respawn" other cookies, and usually have no expiration date.
 
The other thing about cookies, and why they don't rate very highly on the threat-o-meter, is because you have to go back to the "bad" website for the cookie to upload data.
 
BTW, confirming what I mentioned above, there's a new vulnerability found in Adobe Reader. Boo!
 
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