Carrier IQ. Such a nondescript name, but it is one of the largest pieces of spyware used to date, and we can do nothing about it.
Every phone released within the past few years, be they a Blackberry, Android-based, BREW, Nokia, or any number of other handsets (including iPhone, as they are developing a “tool” for it, as well) has (or will soon) include a nice little piece of code designed to log everything you do, be it type a message, listen to a song, check your email, and send it to your cell phone carrier. Your carrier, AT&T/Verizion/T-Mobile/etc, may have access to personal and sensitive data because they installed a “tool” called Carrier IQ. Now, I’m not getting into a long explaination as to what it is, (see here for that, as well as some more law related reasons, eg wiretapping and privacy laws, as to why it’s wrong) but you need to know that it’s affecting you. Everything you do is being watched. Right now. Someone, something, is watching you, your emails, your messages, your phone calls, your Facebook updates, your weird pictures you took of that barn because you could have sworn there was a face of George W Bush in the woodgrain, EVERYTHING.
I may not be one to mention the much joked about robot apocalypse, but I think this is how it started.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like my rights violated like that. If the carriers can read the information sent from Carrier IQ, why can’t a person with malicious intent that works there? Or that is on the same network as you? There’s something wrong with the ability to know everything I’m saying at any time. When you cannot trust your device, what can you do?
Who’s with me when they say they’re going to learn to use a cypher to help encrypt communications? (Or, install CM7. Custom software has no spyware preinstalled.)