Controversy erupts over smartphone user tracking

Carrier IQ, a company that provides tracking tools for carriers and phone vendors, has come under fire as of late for monitoring Android-based devices. And now, the company's software has been found on the iPhone.

Carrier IQ's software is running on every iOS version dating back to iOS 3, well-known iPhone hacker "Chpwn" said yesterday in a blog post. Chpwn dug through the iPhone's operating system for any sign of Carrier IQ, and found it deeply embedded in the operating system's "/usr/bin/" directory.

Yesterday, CNET reported on Carrier IQ's deep integration in Android. According to Android researcher Trevor Eckhart, one of the more outspoken critics of the company's technology, Carrier IQ software running on Android devices can phone home all kinds of information, including keystrokes, SMS messages in plain text, and even browsing history. What's worse, Eckhart says that removing the software is nearly impossible.

"The Carrier IQ application is embedded so deeply in the device that it can't be fully removed without rebuilding the phone from source code," Eckhart said in a blog post. "This is only possible for a user with advanced skills and a fully unlocked device. Even where a device is out of contract, there is no off switch to stop the application from gathering data."

However, Chpwn seems to believe that Carrier IQ works much differently on the iPhone. In fact, disabling its tracking in iOS is as simple as tapping over to the "Diagnostics and Usage" menu in the settings pane and toggling it off. Upon doing so, Chpwn says, no information is shared with Carrier IQ.

For those who don't turn the feature off, Chpwn claims Apple's Carrier IQ installation shares much less information than Android devices. He found that iOS shares "your phone number, your carrier, your country, active phone calls, and your location." However, unlike Android, Apple's installation doesn't share the phone number a user has dialed and only includes location information when "location services are enabled."

Read more about this developing story at CNET.