By It’s been a while since Carrier IQ’s name was in the news. If you don’t remember, their software delivers certain information back to carriers for the supposed sole purpose of helping improve their service. Developer Trevor Eckhart exposed that their application may be doing more than just sending cellular data to carriers. Read more about all of that here.
But fast forward to now and at least one of the “perpetrating” carriers look to take their name out of the tainted hat. Sprint has reportedly instructed all their OEM partners to remove Carrier IQ from their phones’ ROMs in future updates. This was confirmed by HTC who said Sprint did indeed ask them to remove the software from the HTC EVO 3D in a recent update.
While we still don’t know if Carrier IQ is involved in foulplay it’s comforting to know that Sprint users won’t have to deal with it either way. Expect more phones to get this excellent treatment sometime soon. [The Verge]
“Yeah sure, we’ll fix that in an update. I’ll let you know how it’s going in six months!”
Nice! Thank you, Sprint.
Too little, too late. I’ve already cancelled my Sprint service.
Dumb reason to cancel your sprint service. Att and verizon both used carrier iq to a certain extent. Go ahead and pay higher prices with either one now. Unless you chose tmobile this was a dumb choice.
Thank you for your opinion. You’ve obviously done a lot of research on this. I’ve switched to Verizon. Do you have a link you can point me to that shows Verizon is using Carrier IQ on it’s phones? Or that it stores the information gathered in an unsecured log file on the phone (like the Sprint HTC EVO 4G)?
Anyone know if sprint is having them remove CIQ from their boostmobile phones as well?
I’ve been around this site the start with Trev, and never have I found a piece of this on my thunderbolt and there’s a reason that VZW wasn’t named in the class action lawsuit against the use of ciq.
Really liking my unlimited lte on Verizon! With sprint I never got 4g inside
Sprint way don’t you push a update for all the phones you f’ed up now!!! Just more smoke and mirrors.
Sprint way don’t you push a update for all the phones you f’ed up now!!! Just more smoke and mirrors.
Regardless of their intentions, it’s still nice to see Sprint trying to do the right thing now. It pushes them ahead of AT&T and T-Mobile. There are apps out there right now that can (supoosedly) block CiQ from sending data, though, it may take up some of your battery life.
Its off of my Evo 3D and my phone is not only more secure but noticeably faster.
Check out Smith Micro. they will now be used by Sprint. They are right up the street from where Trevor Eckhart works, although I don’t see official work between the two companies it does have me scratching my head.
Also they disabled it, I don’t know how a simple update would remove the embedded agent. They might have simply turned it off for now but it wouldn’t be that hard to turn it back on either. If they stay with Carrier IQ in the long run.