Apple: Carrier IQ Not Included in iOS 5, Still on iPhone 4

December 2nd, 2011 by Dan Howley, LAPTOP Staff Writer

The controversy over allegations that Carrier IQ has been spying on millions of smartphone users hit critical mass yesterday, and companies are doing their best to distance themselves from the potential fallout. Apple, which previously included the Carrier IQ software on its popular iPhone says the application is not bundled with most iOS 5 and will be removed from all other Apple products through a future software update, Ars Technica reports.

But when pushed by Ars about what the company meant when it said that most iOS 5 products don’t include Carrier IQ, Apple reps fessed up, saying there is one product that still uses Carrier IQ … the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S and other Apple products that were updated to iOS 5, however, are clean. The Apple reps went on to say the Carrier IQ software was, “just for diagnostic data that was sent to Apple, and customers had to actively opt in to that to even provide us the level of information.”

If you can’t remember opting into allowing Carrier IQ to track you, you can easily disable the software by setting the Diagnostic and Usage option to Don’t Send under Automatically Send on your iPhone.

The Carrier IQ story blew up earlier this week when software developer Trevor Eckhart posted a YouTube video that showed the software logging every keystroke he entered into his phone. The software, according to Carrier IQ’s site, is used to provide wireless carriers and phone manufacturers with information about when and why calls are dropped by users’ phones. The company has adamantly denied claims that its software is in actuality a keylogger and insisted that the Carrier IQ software strips out all private user data before sending information to carriers.

via Ars Technica