Carrier IQ – Apple, Motorola and others facing lawsuit

Derrick Cramer

Derrick joined MyBroadband in 2011 as a junior journalist with a strong background in computer hardware and gaming - he lives for that new motherboard...

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Following a class action lawsuit filed last week against Carrier IQ, HTC and Samsung, a new lawsuit was filed in a U.S. district court in Delaware against an even larger list of companies.

Those in the firing line include Carrier IQ, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, HTC, Apple, Samsung, and Motorola Mobility.

The latest lawsuit was filed on behalf of four plaintiffs, who use Apple, HTC and Samsung devices. They are also customers of AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. The suit notes that, “defendants Samsung, Apple, Motorola, and HTC pre-install Carrier IQ software on cell phones used by its customers on the AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint networks.”

The onus now falls on the plaintiffs and their lawyers to prove that installing Carrier IQ on devices without a customer’s knowledge allowed the companies to collect more information than is lawfully permitted.

Apple has previously stated that they use Carrier IQ to record diagnostic information anonymously, and “did not record keystrokes, messages or any personal information for the diagnostic data.”

AT&T and Sprint have also gone on the record as saying the Carrier IQ software allows them to gather information to improve device and network performance, and denied they collected personal information such as photos or text messages.

Read the full story at: Ars Technica.

Tags: Apple, AT&T, Carrier IQ, htc, Motorola, samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile