Cell carriers add insult to injury

The Carrier IQ pre-installed keylogging rootkit software has been a big item in tech security news ever since Trevor Eckhart of Torrington, CT unleashed his analysis on his WordPress blog a few weeks ago.

Cell phone carriers, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, but not Verizon, installed this software on Android smartphones and iPhones. Cell phone manufacturers, such as HTC and Samsung, installed it on their devices, which were sold by Verizon.

This software records your phone use and then transmits it to the cell carrier each day. It can record pretty much anything you do with your smartphone, including usernames and passwords.

Our privacy has been under attack, by large corporations and the Federal government, ever since the George W. Bush administration. This governmental erosion of our right to privacy continues unabated in the Obama administration.  SOPA and PIPA legislation, now before Congress, will further erode our rights.

The daily log that Carrier IQ transmits back to the carriers can be as large as 200 kb of data, 1.4 MB per week,  or about 6 MB per month.

Guess who pays for that data?  We do. It is subtracted from our data plan allotment. We are forced to pay for the cost of spying on us. I think this is an intolerable situation. The spies can pay for their own damn data plan and leave ours alone. I hope you feel the same.