Digital Valdosta

Does your phone have the Carrier IQ rootkit on it? Don’t know? It’s tracking your activity on your phone. You might want to read this and learn how to remove it.

Carrier IQ: The Rootkit installed by your carriers

It’s bad enough that you have to worry about someone hacking into your phone and maliciously attacking your phone or computer. But in the recent news, there appears to be a rootkit installed on iPhone and Android cellphones. This rootkit was not installed by a malicious hacker, but by the manufacturer.

A rootkit is software that enables continued privileged access to a computer while actively hiding its presence from administrators by subverting standard operating system functionality or other applications.

Excerpt from Wikipedia

While rootkits are, in fact, not something you want on any system. There’s no reason to panic. There are ways to remove the malware that are fairly easy.

Android Devices

Android users have several ways to remove Carrier IQ. However, depending on your phone, you may have to be rooted to do so. Once rooted, running the “CIQ Checks” task in this app on XDA will tell you whether it’s running on your system. On HTC phones, you can also search for the app in Settings > Applications as described in the video above, but using the Logging Checker app is the most reliable way to check. As always, make a backup before you use anything with heavy root permissions.

To read more about the removal from Android phones read the post on Lifehacker.

Iphone Devices

It had been speculated that the iPhone had Carrier IQ installed as well but no one had said where to find the proof. That is until a blogger that goes by the name of Chpwn gave directions where the rootkit could be found. Luckily, there’s an easy way to turn it off. Just head to Settings > General > About > Diagnostics and Usage, and tap “Don’t Send”. That’s it!

Final Thoughts

While Carrier IQ is fairly easy to remove in most situations. There still is not a straight answer from manufacturers as to why it is on the phones. Some even toss blame around. I would not hesitate to remove or disable this on your phone. With this on your phone the manufacturer could potentially access sensitive data on your phone from text messages to your credit card numbers.

I hope that this post has helped you, until next time have a blessed day.