Carrier IQ smartphone snooping row escalates in US

A US senator has challenged the maker of controversial smartphone software that has triggered a snooping row, while Apple has claimed that it no longer supports the technology on most iOS devices.

Senator Al Franken has written to Carrier IQ calling on the firm to explain the "troubling" findings of security expert Trevor Eckhart.

Earlier in the week, Eckhart claimed that Carrier IQ's software could track everything people did on certain smartphones, without asking for their consent.

Carrier IQ said that the software, which the firm claims is deployed on more than 140 million devices, helps diagnose faults for operators, and does not spy on users.

The row erupted after Eckhart posted a video on YouTube supposedly demonstrating his claims that Carrier IQ could track a user's location, keystrokes and websites that they visited.

Carrier IQ failed in an attempt to stop Eckhart's claims with the threat of legal action, but the firm backed down after the intervention of campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In his letter to Carrier IQ, senator Franken said that if Eckhart's findings were found to be true, Carrier IQ could have broken US law.

"Consumers need to know that their safety and privacy are being protected by the companies they trust with their sensitive information," he said in a statement.

"The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling.

"This news underscores the need for Congress to act swiftly to protect the location information and private, sensitive information of consumers. But right now, Carrier IQ has a lot of questions to answer."

The company now has until December 14 to respond to Franken's letter.

Carrier IQ has been found on Samsung handsets and some smartphones from HTC. Both firms said that it was installed at the request of operators.

Apple has since issued a statement that it stopped supporting Carrier IQ with the release of the most recent iOS 5 operation system. This means the iPad, iPod and iPhone 4S have removed Carrier IQ, but traces still remain on last year's iPhone handset.

"We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products, and we're going to remove it completely in a future software update," Apple said in a statement issued to Ars Technica.

"It was just for diagnostic data that was sent to Apple, and customers had to actively opt in to that to even provide us that level of information.

"If they opted in, that data was sent anonymously, and in encrypted fashion. We did not record keystrokes, messages or any personal information for the diagnostic data, and we have no plans to in the future."

In April, Apple claimed that it has never tracked the location of iPhone users and "has no plans to ever do so", following a different controversy over software on the device.