Submission + - Smartphone Invader Tracks Your Every Move (informationweek.com)
kierny writes: "Security researcher Trevor Eckhart (of HTC data leakage discovery fame), tracing what he believed to be a virus operating in a data center and "phoning home," found the suspicious communications came from diagnostic software running on smartphones. The Carrier IQ software, installed on more than 141 million mobile phones, can track GPS location, websites visited, search queries, and all keys pressed. But in the case of the software found by Eckhart, which was running on Verizon and Sprint handsets running Android, Carrier IQ had been configured to function as a rootkit: it typically couldn't be deactivated, and in many cases its existence and background operations were completely hidden from the handset owner. Furthermore, the data collected--which carriers typically share freely with law enforcement personnel, no subpoena required, and no record of the query made public--would easily allow law enforcement personnel to track handset owners' GPS location over long periods of time. "It is a massive invasion of privacy," says Eckhart."