Now that the first of the lawsuits have been filed and a US Senator has sent an open letter to the CEO of Carrier IQ asking for more details about their tracking software, you may find yourself looking at your own device and wondering just what it’s been doing without your knowledge and consent.
If you want to check, here’s a good place to start.
This is one of the best reasons to NOT get your phone through a carrier. Most of the unlocked devices sold from manufacturers don’t have this crap pre-loaded. In fact, Nokia made a strong announcement saying that none of their direct-sale phones have it installed, though it couldn’t verify that for vender branded devices, as branding happens at a vendor shop.
Personally, I have an N900 direct purchased from Nokia. It runs a Debian variant, and you’d be hard pressed to find stuff like this on there, since it’s mainly open-source. (There are a few closed bit, but that’s true of all phones, since GSM and some chipsets have proprietary drivers…)
The iPhone has it but it’s just startup info. I looked at the logs on mine.It can be turrned off too.