Forum Post: Google now officially evil: the Droid phone rootkit "CARRIER IQ".
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 1, 2011, 12:43 p.m. EST by mserfas
(652)
from Ashland, PA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/secret-software-logging-video/
Perhaps what is remarkable about this story is not so much that the phone is spying on people, recording their position, every number they dial, every key they press, every text message - which Americans take for granted by now - but that they were caught at it. True, they tried threatening the researcher, Trevor Eckhart, but apparently not effectively enough.
The question is, now that Google is officially evil, will they drop the rest of the pretense? Are they going to start selling the searchable history of everything you ever looked up to your employer or whoever's interested for $55 or so? I mean, the company is worth billions, and I doubt it's because of those ads nobody clicks on. Their searches now bring up so many alleged synonyms and scrambles and pages that don't even mention any term you typed in that they're becoming almost worthless. It seems like it can only be a matter of time before they begin some Ascension Protocol and things really hit the fan.
Time to throw out the phones, the credit cards, the debit cards, use the computer at the library, put foil on all the windows, a tent over the backyard, wear a disguise in public, and scream into your pillow...
Okay, maybe not. There is just no privacy left, and this has been going on for years. Microsoft had a built in program that allowed them to read your computer data anytime you went on the internet, claiming is was so they would know how much to charge people for services. There seems to be some belief that buying a product or service is equal to inviting the company into the most private areas of your life. This is exactly why we need to take power away from these people... They demonstrate over and over that they will abuse that power and the public trust. The government is using these tools to their own benefit, so has no stake in regulating them.