carrierIQ homepageAbout a month and a half ago, I penned the piece NSA's Greatest Weapon In Surveillance? Outright Ignorance In Tech Consumers.
The goal was to attempt to wake up the less than conscious in regards
to where and with whom the true threats to privacy and security stem
from. Those harping on innovative designs such as Glass as security
threats are failing to see the forest due to the massive amount of tree
bark in the way. This piece is another attempt at education from my
perspective.
I
have been hard on the large US carriers, and for good reason. Barring
the smallest (and not by coincidence, the most innovative) of the 4,
these guys exemplify the monopolistic behavior that has caused America
to fall behind the world on many levels. Basically, from an innovation
and financial performance perspective, they're basically deadbeats!
Hence,
One
other reason many should be down on the deadbeat carriers is also a
very fundamental given, that really shouldn't be given - Privacy! Nearly
all of the major carriers use the device that they sold you to snoop on
you. US cellular carriers use an app that is basically one of the most
widely dispersed spyware apps in this country. It can systematically
syphon out location data, keystrokes and other aspects of e-mail and SMS
conversations. Don't belive me, this is a quote directly from the vendor of the spyware itself:
Network Operators and device manufacturers determine whether and how they deploy the iQ Agent and what metrics will be gathered and forwarded to the Network Operators. The
iQ Agent receives instructions in the form of a profile, which
activates the iQ Agent and defines what available metrics are to be
collected and provides instructions on how to pre-process the data prior
to uploading. The
Embedded iQ Agent is not visible or discoverable by consumers. Since
it is deeply embedded inside the device software, it cannot be deleted
by consumers.
In non-nerd, anti-dork English, this says carriers decide what the spyware app and Trojan Horse
rips from your device and sends back to the carrier. This
spyware/Trojan Horse is purposely hidden and concealed from the owner of
the device. As per Wikipedia:
- Spyware is software that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge and that may send such information to another entity without the consumer's consent, or that asserts control over a computer without the consumer's knowledge.
- A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is a hacking program that is a non-self-replicating type of malware which gains privileged access to the operating system while appearing to perform a desirable function but instead drops a malicious payload, often including a backdoor allowing unauthorized access to the target's computer.[1] These backdoors tend to be invisible to average users, but may cause the computer to run slowly.
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