People Are Freaking Out About Carrier IQ, The Hidden Smartphone Program That Tracks Everything You Do

The mobile community is up in arms about a huge new privacy issues with smartphones related to Carrier IQ, a hidden program that tracks almost everything you do.

Carrier IQ is a program that comes preinstalled on many mobile phones from manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, Nokia, BlackBerry, and supposedly Apple. It has the ability to track and record everything on your phone from the content of your text messages to the web pages you visit. Carrier IQ can even record every key you press and has the potential to transmit this information to a third party without the user knowing.

How did everyone find out about this?

A few days ago, an Android developer named Trevor Eckhart discovered Carrier IQ hidden on several mobile phones and that it had the ability to track pretty much everything the user does. From there, everything exploded.

At first, most only thought that Android phones and a few models from Nokia and BlackBerry had Carrier IQ installed. But it didn’t take long for the iPhone hacker chpwn to discover that iPhones running iOS 3 an above contain the Carrier IQ program, but it’s unclear whether or not it transmits any user data.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at Business Insider By Steve Kovach, Business Insider