This morning we told you about the mess created when CarrierIQ decided to go after the developer who drew its software to our collective attention, revealing some potentially very troubling behavior the program seemed capable of. Not only did CarrierIQ want to silence his revelations about its software, but the company even went so far as to demand he apologize for his depiction of its functionality. As should be no surprise, the smartphone community didn’t exactly react to this behavior with approving nods, and an even fiercer backlash against CarrierIQ began to grow. The company must have realized the hornet’s nest it just knocked open, as it’s now backed-down from its position, apologizing to the dev, and promising to be open about what its software is capable of.

Kudos to CarrierIQ for seeing the light (eventually), but there are still some serious concerns about its software. While we understand its arguments for collecting basic metrics on phone performance, and have no reason to believe it’s being dishonest as to how it collects and disseminates that data, there are some larger problems that still need to be addressed. For one, the company has implied that its app is capable of a lot more functionality than is currently used, potentially including the ability to report back on the contents of message you send. More importantly, though, there needs to be a way to completely remove the software package from your phone. We’ll just have to wait and see how progress towards that end goes, now that these legal obstacles are out-of-the-way.

Source: CarrierIQ (PDF)

Via: Android Central