Updated 9:26 am ET, Wednesday, December 7
Carrier IQ, the company behind the controversial mobile intelligence software of the same name installed in the background on upwards of 140 million mobile phones worldwide, has been in damage control mode ever since an Android researcher published a video in late November showing that the software appears to receive every key stroke a user enters on his or her phone.
After initially threatening to sue that Android researcher in a cease-and-desist letter, the company quickly recanted, but has since been bombarded with negative press and scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators.
As a consequence, the company’s executives, particularly vice president of marketing, Andrew Coward, have taken a much humbler and more nuanced approach to explaining their product’s functionality in recent days, giving extensive interviews to CNET and the Verge, among other online media outlets.
Now Coward has reached out to TPM with answers to some of our most persistent questions about the Carrier IQ software. Here’s our brief Q-and-A in its entirety:
TPM: Why was the existence of Carrier IQ not publicly disclosed to cell phone users until recently and why can’t they opt-out of it or disable it?
Coward: While the name “Carrier IQ” is not publicly disclosed to cell phone users, the fact that diagnostic information would be gathered is disclosed by operators under the agreements they have with their customers. Understanding how the network is actually working is very important to operators and their ability to deliver a high quality service is directly related to the quality of information they have on each customer’s experience.
TPM: What is Carrier IQ’s plan going forward for handling customer data? Put another way, how has this situation caused by Mr. Eckhart’s video demo changed the company and its product?
Coward: Obviously we are going through an intense period of scrutiny in how we operate and what we do. We fundamentally believe that the information we provide can and does improve the quality of our customer’s network. We look forward to an open dialog in ensuring that consumers understand the data collected and how it enhances their experience.TPM: Who are Carrier IQ’s primary competitors and why haven’t they received as much scrutiny?
Coward: We do have competitors, however, none of these competitors are integrated on the device when it ships but are downloaded after market. Separately, in an adjacent market, there are also companies that provide device configuration information and Mobile Device Management (not analytics) and these are embedded.
Again, as others have pointed out, Carrier IQ — though a five year old company from Silicon Valley mecca Mountain View, California — is not especially used to dealing with the press, especially in such high volumes as they have been recently.
That’s because Carrier IQ’s primary customers aren’t users, but the nation’s huge telecom companies — AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have all admitted to using Carrier IQ on their phones in some fashion.
Moreover, sources close to Carrier IQ told TPM that some of their PR people haven’t slept much in close to a week because they’ve been so busy responding to the scandal.
So there can be some leeway afforded in the fact that the company’s answers to the questions about their software haven’t been especially direct or simple.
But given just how many times Carrier IQ has now repeatedly provided answers to the simple questions of what the software does, whether it records keystrokes (Carrier IQ adamantly denies this), and why it can’t be disabled — to little effect of calming the controversy, Carrier IQ’s efforts to restore its image don’t seem like they will be so successful in a PR sense.
And that’s even considering the fact that numerous security researchers have now stepped forward to defend Carrier IQ and cast doubt on the claims of the original Android researcher, Trevor Eckhart.
But more importantly, when it comes to public opinion and public action — the cat appears to be out of the bag, and the ship has already sailed, so to speak.
Another class-action lawsuit was filed against the company — along with AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, HTC, Apple, Samsung, and Motorola Mobility — in Delaware on Friday, bringing the total number of active class action lawsuits against Carrier IQ up to four in the U.S.
Still, there is a good case to be made that no matter how insidious Carrier IQ’s software may seem, it is ultimately its customers, the nation’s telecom giants, who shoulder much of the blame. We’ve reached out to AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile for more information on how they implement Carrier IQ and will update when we receive a response.
First update: Updated with a link to Carrier IQ’s previous denial of recording keystrokes.
