Researcher Claims Software On Many Smartphones Is Tracking Your Every Keystroke

There was that late-night text you shouldn’t have sent, or maybe the embarrassing amount of times you searched for Hall & Oates lyrics before calling your ex-boyfriend to cry. What if software on your Android phone was logging all of that info and keeping it elsewhere? One security researcher claims that is exactly what’s going on.

MSNBC reports on the research done by a man named Trevor Eckhart. He’s released a video which he claims shows that Carrier IQ’s software on Android phones, some BlackBerrys and Nokias, is spying on users.

Carrier IQ denied the claims, and initially threatened legal action before backing off when the Electronic Frontier Foundation got involved.

The claim is that the software is basically keeping track of everything you do on your phone, including your battery life, texts, which apps you download and more.

Wired writer David Kravets looked into the story as well, writing of the video evidence, “Cringe as the video shows the software logging each number as Eckhart fingers the dialer.”

Carrier IQ denies its software is a “rootkit,” and that users shouldn’t be worried.

“While we look at many aspects of a device’s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools,” the company says in a statement.

Check out the video for yourself below, and skip to minute 11:30 for some really creepy stuff:

Researcher: Secret software tracks phone users [MSNBC]

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