Sprint Orders All OEMs To Strip Carrier IQ From Their Phones

An anonymous reader writes with a report that Sprint, in an attempt to extricate itself from the Carrier IQ drama, has "ordered that all of their hardware partners remove the Carrier IQ software from Sprint devices as soon as possible." Sprint confirmed that they've disabled the use of Carrier IQ on their end, saying, "diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected." The software is currently installed on roughly 26 million Sprint phones, though the company has only been collecting data from 1.3 million of them.

Sounds cool

[Toe, The]

I am currently on the fence trying to decide between Sprint and Verizon. I think Sprint just tipped me to their side with this.

Price Change Coming?

[crow_t_robot]

I wonder if this will result in a price hike since they will be losing all this juicy customer data that they may have been selling to "market research" vultures.

Re:Sounds cool

[DriedClexler]

Oh yeah, I'm totally sure Verizon made sure OEMs kept CarrierIQ off all their phones and, where that wasn't possible, deleted all such information as it arrived, since they would never use data that could be sold at a tremendous profit or alert them to network problems.

*jerk-off gesture*

Re:Carrier IQ

[CSFFlame]

And if they'd actually behaved when they made the release version they would have been fine (no GPS, keylogging, website logging, or SMS reading and they would have been fine.

Hands in the Cookie jar?

[bobbied]

I think they just got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and wisely decided to let go of the cookie. I'm guessing that their corporate lawyer types who are dealing with the lawsuits recommended this happen ASAP and management is following their lawyers'' advice. The question now is will all the crumbs laying around lead to them being punished or just sent to bed without dinner.

Re:Sounds cool

[Tanktalus]

Well, that depends. On why Verizon never had CarrierIQ.

If it's because "we looked at it, and thought it a gross violation of our customers' privacy" then, yes, "never did it" trumps.

However, if it's because Verizon has not yet managed to get the required hardware to support the volume of data that CarrierIQ produces, combined with the analytics systems required to make bottom-line-driven decisions with that information, then, no, "never did it (yet)" does not trump. In fact, it loses, big time. Sprint, having gone down that road, sunk a bunch of money on it, and abandoned it, is the clear winner as they're unlikely to do it a second time. Verizon may still be looking at implementing it/rolling it out.

I'm not saying that's the case. I'm saying it's a possible scenario that fits with the known facts (very few in this thread) where "never did it" does not trump "stopped doing it". I don't have any idea how likely either scenario is.

Re:Sounds cool

[Lunix Nutcase]

And your evidence that they ever used it is where? Oh right, you don't have any.

Re:Sounds cool

[froggymana]

And your evidence that they ever used it is where? Oh right, you don't have any.

And even if they didn't use CarrierIQ, what's to say that they don't have a homegrown version of software that does the exact same thing?

Re:Sounds cool

[Andy Dodd]

Maybe the fact that if they did have such software, people would have found it?

Seriously, it isn't like people just "discovered" CarrierIQ hiding a few weeks ago - the only thing new is that it made it to the right news outlets and the news went viral.

Developers on XDA have been aware of CIQ (and removing it when found in custom ROMs) for months. If Verizon had anything even remotely similar, people would have found it by now.

Re:Sounds cool

[DriedClexler]

Sorry, just going by CarrierIQ's own self-pimping about how many phones have their rootkits. Simple pigeonhole principle says that if they have their crap on umpteen million phones, then even if all of Sprint and AT&Fee's phones have it, some of Verizon's must as well.

Re:Sounds cool

[scubamage]

A separate out-of-band piece of hardware running snmp is common place in carrier's, and in high end systems. How else do you think cable carriers control set top boxes? Its defined by packetcable and docsis specs. How else do you think iLOM, aLOM, iLO, and DRAC can provide SNMP statistics for the boxes they're embedded in? Read more before you call someone an idiot. SNMP is frequently used out of band, specifically when you don't want an end user to be screwing with things. Try working in a fortune 500 carrier and you'll learn a bit more about it.

Re:Sounds cool

[fdrebin]

"what's to say that they don't have a homegrown version of software that does the exact same thing" Based on their website, if they did I would feel secure that it didn't work properly.

Based on having worked for Verizon in software development, I can assure you that it's a miracle when almost anything works properly.
The really sleazy types were the marketing and management types. The stories I could tell... I feel unclean just thinking about it.

Re:Sounds cool

[Anonymous Coward]

That probably explains why the last two LG phones we've had from Verizon had a habit of just shutting off mid-call for no reason.