Your iPhone without Carrier IQ

Did you know that your telephone tracks you with Carrier IQ? Or you do not even know what Carrier IQ is?

Never mind, most people did know neither one , nor second until this week.

Carrier IQ is a service which helps manufacturers to collect information about how you use their products in real world. It serves the information up. With this information manufacturers study performance, make business decisions and improve products. The software is installed by your carrier or your phone manufacturer; it is not part of any Operating System. However, most people did not know about that.

Carrier IQ is an "embedded analytics company" and it says that its software is installed on over 140 million devices.

This week a hacker chpwn has tweeted that he had found Carrier IQ software in iOS3. It has been confirmed that these references actually exists in iOS5 also and it has different name:

/usr/bin/awd_ice2.

However it seems that it is more limited for iOS than for Android. The hack says on his blog: "...it does not appear the daemon has any access or communication with the UI layer, where text entry is done." If this is true, it means that iOS has no connection with your passwords, emails, SMS texts, etc. and most important, Carrier IQ only kicks in when your phone is in Diagnostic Mode.

In a word, no one sure knows what is being logged and sent off but the fact is that people do not like this, they feel like someone is controlling them and that is comprehensible.

“We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so” – affirmed apple on Thursday. You know the company usually considers complaints of its users,(for example, the recent survey proved that iPhone 4S has a satisfaction rate above 90%) will you believe it or not, it is up to you.