Darth Caesar
Might be a Wizard
Big brother is always watching 
On a serious note this is rather unnerving. Companies should not be allowed to this.
On a serious note this is rather unnerving. Companies should not be allowed to this.
Your smartphone is spying on you.
- Thread starter PlutonianEmpire
- Start date
And this is why I become more of a quasi-luddite with each passing day. All these gadgets are much too intrusive.
Rulle_Kebab
Warlord
I have a HTC Desire that was bought without a carrier from new and I have been trying to find anything like on the video but cant. Guess it is hidden.
Ill definately look into that other OS that Mise is talking about! I saw they suport my phone altho I havent any idea how to manage it. Ill find some techgeek to help me if I can!
I find it very nasty and speaking of surveilance, have you guys seen the new wikileaks?
Ill definately look into that other OS that Mise is talking about! I saw they suport my phone altho I havent any idea how to manage it. Ill find some techgeek to help me if I can!
I find it very nasty and speaking of surveilance, have you guys seen the new wikileaks?
Rulle_Kebab
Warlord
And that's why I don't have a smartphone!
Actually, it's because I can't afford one.
If I can't remove this stuff and get the other Android thingie working you can buy mine for cheap
This stuff scares me!Altho I can't quite understand wether it is the carriers who put or not? I use a prepaid anonymous sim card as well and change sim card and number every 3 months or so when too many people get my number hehe.
CELTICEMPIRE
Zulu Conqueror
What a great time to not have a smartphone.
Skwink
FRIIIIIIIIIITZ
- Joined
- May 14, 2010
- Messages
- 5,688
If I can't remove this stuff and get the other Android thingie working you can buy mine for cheap
Altho I can't quite understand wether it is the carriers who put or not? I use a prepaid anonymous sim card as well and change sim card and number every 3 months or so when too many people get my number hehe.
I'd love to take up your offer, but it's not the phones price that is the problem, it's my parents don't feel like paying for a smartphone plan when I can talk and text for $30 a month on a prepaid. 
Tycho
AFK Forum Warrior
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2011
- Messages
- 3,240
Kind of crossing the line really. If you want to help out the company (with whatever they need help with, maybe advertising specifically for you I guess?), you can just hit yes. This just a little insidious however, without the option to opt out at any time.
SouthernKing
crickety cricket
The government really needs to start restricting what megacorporations can do, this is getting to ridiculous heights.
this is already on ridiculous heights.
from more than a year ago : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/15/google-admits-storing-private-data
Mise
isle of lucy
If you bought it without any carrier branding or anything then it won't have Carrier IQ. It's the carrier that demands HTC and Samsung to put it on the devices, and so far only Sprint and AT&T in the US have been linked to it. HTC have said that no European devices contain it, so if you can't find evidence of it then you probably don't have it.
Articles keep claiming that there is spyware on "every single Android smartphone" - that isn't true. As much as I'd like the Open Source efforts to propagate and for carrier bloatware to be eradicated forever as a result of this, this sort of reporting really annoys me...
times like these I'm kinda glad that I live in a country with strict data privacy laws....doesn't make this impossible, of course, but at least much less likely.
Rulle_Kebab
Warlord
Nice... but I guess one can't ever completly trust anything being said by media nor the corps heheh.
The closest thing I found was something called: com.android.qxdmlog
and I cant remove or do anything with it.
Do you have experience with that cyanogenmod?
I am a bit afraid I will just bollocks it up and be left with an invalid phone, hehe.
Mise
isle of lucy
Well I've read on various forums that people in the UK do not have Carrier IQ (i.e. lots of people in the UK have looked for it on their phones but haven't found it). But as you say, there's no reason to trust them - even if they deny having Carrier IQ on it, there could be other stuff on there that does similar things.
Yeah, I use Cyanogenmod on both of my phones. The process does carry big risks - if you screw up you could permanently brick your phone, and the process itself will void your warranty, so you could end up with a dead phone.
Having said that, if you follow the instructions carefully, and read up about the process beforehand (either on the cyanogenmod website, or over at the XDA forums for your device - there are lots of tutorials and FAQs in the "development" section), then nothing bad should happen. And the procedure for the HTC Desire is quite well established and supported. Personally I found it to be a lot of fun, and the end result was a phone that I could customise the crap out of, without the junk carriers pile onto the phones at retail.
If I were you, I wouldn't put Cyanogenmod on your phone if you were solely concerned about the Carrier IQ software. I would instead put Cyanogenmod because it has numerous advantages in terms of security, customisability, and update frequency, and if you're curious enough about computers and mobile technology to read up about and perform this stuff just for fun.
kochman
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2009
- Messages
- 10,818
I'm going to assume that now that this issue has been discovered, developers will come up with ways to uninstall it...
It's far more realistic than the companies doing it themselves. Surely they use this data for advertizing, etc... more and more money from less and less scrupolous methods...
It's far more realistic than the companies doing it themselves. Surely they use this data for advertizing, etc... more and more money from less and less scrupolous methods...
Similar threads
