[Natsu]

I sincerely doubt that CarrierIQ, or the phone carriers, even care about our text messages. That said, there are other people who do

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/leaked_911_tex...

Even so, I wouldn't put it past them to do keyword mining for mobile ads. That just seems like such an obvious potential use.

[tptacek]

If Sprint wanted to do that, it doesn't need agent software to get the messages.

[scott_s]

This is an important point that I think some people are forgetting. I use Verizon. They already have access to all of my text messages. I send my text messages to Verizon, who then forwards them on to the person I'm talking to. Just as Google first gets my email.

[tptacek]

It is unfortunately a point that the contradicts the thread narrative that casts a hapless, poorly-marketed analytics company as Big Brother incarnate, so nobody's going to pay attention to it.

[Natsu]

They put backdoors on basically every phone in secret, threatened the guy who outed them with a lawsuit and are perfectly capable of snooping on everything, whether they do so or not.

What do you know about them that makes you trust them?

[tptacek]

Nothing. There's just a likely innocent explanation for all three of those things:

1. CarrierIQ is a "secret" in the same sense as the network management software that Sprint uses that can also see all your SMS messages is a "secret": (a) nobody at Sprint thinks its relevant to you, and (b) nobody at Sprint thinks its any of your business. Which, if you take a breath, strictly speaking about the performance metrics they're collecting, it isn't your business.

2. CarrierIQ was dumb about threatening this guy like lots of other companies have been identically dumb. Companies have threatened to sue me. I remain cordial with the owners of some of those companies. Welcome to security research; we don't have jackets, but we sure get a lot of press.

Incidentally, put yourself in CarrierIQ's position and assume that this particular researcher is full of shit, meaning, no, CarrierIQ is not snooping on people's keystrokes. What would you do? There's a guy out there claiming that their performance agent is a "rootkit". They got pissed. Surprised?

3. Any piece of systems software the carrier agrees to stick on the phone is capable of snooping. Sprint itself could just backdoor their Android distro.

[Natsu]

In their shoes, I would have contacted the researcher and explained myself. While unsurprising, that move was unwise, and I would imagine that you agree on that point at least.

I think someone once said that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. Whether they're dumb or malicious, I'm just glad their crap isn't on my phone.