The company at the centre of the smartphone data logging privacy scare has said it never stores SMS keystrokes and that mobile networks are responsible for the information that is kept.
The Carrier IQ software, installed on handsets from many of the world’s top manufacturers, has been accused of logging keystrokes, including your SMS messages.
A video showing the software at work was revealed earlier this week bringing a storm which has already seen four lawsuits filed against the company.
However, speaking to the Register, Carrier IQ says the claims are false and has reaffirmed its claim that the software only acts as an error logging tool used to improve networks.
Never logged
Marketing VP Andrew Coward explains: “Our mantra has always been to throw away as much information as early as possible and throw away what you don’t need on the handset first.
“The content of SMS messages are never logged. There are two things that happen when SMS messages are received.
“One is, obviously, we count them, the ones that succeed, the ones that fail. We do also record the telephone numbers the SMSs are from and to.
“The content of the SMS is never stored and never transmitted”
Blame the networks
The company says that the information that it passes to network operators is actually ‘less than they already know’
Coward added: “We’re not collecting data on our own behalf, and that’s really important. The data that’s being gathered is commissioned by the operators to be gathered.
“It’s under their control, albeit sometimes in our data center, sometimes in their data center. We have no rights to that data.
“The other thing to think about is that while you potentially jump through all these hoops, the operators themselves are going to have all this information one way or another.
“The operators themselves will comply with law enforcement. They will have a huge amount of information even without our technology.”
Operators and OEMs alike have attempted to distance themselves from the software, but both HTC and Samsung faces wiretapping charges.
Apple has said it had previously used Carrier IQ software on previous versions of iOS, but have phased it out with iOS 5.
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