Carrier IQ warned of lawsuit risk

US— First it was Carrier IQ threatening legal action, now the mobile intelligence firm is being warned it could be open to lawsuits from consumers whose phones are installed with its software.

Law professor and former Justice Department prosecutor Paul Ohm took to Twitter to say that if the Carrier IQ “rootkit” story is accurate it could be grounds for a class action lawsuit based on federal wiretapping law.

Ohm was referring to reports on the work of Trevor Eckhart, a researcher who has analysed and filmed the way Carrier IQ’s software operates on his HTC mobile device. Eckhart’s work appears to show the Carrier IQ technology logging button presses, the contents of text messages and the addresses of websites he visits.

Wiretap laws forbid individuals or organisations from acquiring the contents of people’s communications without their consent, says Ohm. But as security consultant Dan Rosenberg, of Virtual Security Research, has pointed out: “There is a big difference between ‘Look, it does something when I press a key’ and ‘It’s sending all my keystrokes to the carrier’.”

Rosenberg claims to have reverse engineered Carrier IQ and could find “no evidence that [the company is] collecting anything more than what they’ve publicly proclaimed: anonymised usage metrics”.

But in an interview with Forbes, Ohm said that “even if [Carrier IQ] were collecting only anonymised usage metrics” it could still be open to a lawsuit.

In his analysis, Eckhart said that at no time was he asked to give his permission for Carrier IQ to operate on his device and attempting a “forced stop” of the application had no effect.

The company initially threatened Eckhart with legal action if he did not takedown his research, but changed tact after the intervention of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In a statement dated 23 November, the company said that its software does not record keystrokes, provide tracking tools or inspect and report on the contents of email or text message communications, nor does it provide real-time data reporting to any of its mobile network customers. It is interested only in “counting and summarising performance”, CEO Larry Lenhart said in a YouTube video, posted on 20 November.

Carrier IQ’s website states that its software is installed on more than 140 million phones. Reports say the software has been found running on Nokia, Android and Research in Motion (RIM) devices, along with a cut-down version on Apple iOS phones. But Nokia today said that Carrier IQ “does not ship products for any Nokia devices” while RIM said it does not install or authorise its carrier partners to install Carrier IQ on its BlackBerry smartphones.

We hope you enjoyed this article.
Research Live is published by MRS.

The Market Research Society (MRS) exists to promote and protect the research sector, showcasing how research delivers impact for businesses and government.

Members of MRS enjoy many benefits including tailoured policy guidance, discounts on training and conferences, and access to member-only content.

For example, there's an archive of winning case studies from over a decade of MRS Awards.

Find out more about the benefits of joining MRS here.

0 Comments


Display name

Email

Join the discussion

Newsletter
Stay connected with the latest insights and trends...
Sign Up
Latest From MRS

Our latest training courses

Our new 2025 training programme is now launched as part of the development offered within the MRS Global Insight Academy

See all training

Specialist conferences

Our one-day conferences cover topics including CX and UX, Semiotics, B2B, Finance, AI and Leaders' Forums.

See all conferences

MRS reports on AI

MRS has published a three-part series on how generative AI is impacting the research sector, including synthetic respondents and challenges to adoption.

See the reports

Progress faster...
with MRS 
membership

Mentoring

CPD/recognition

Webinars

Codeline

Discounts