T-Mobile and Motorola Answer Questions About Carrier iQ

T-Mobile and Motorola have responded to Sen. Al Franken regarding Carrier iQ’s rootkit being embedded on their smartphones. Motorola is claiming that the software is on only four of their devices, but they do not have control over how information is accessed or collected.  T-Mobile claims that the software is installed on nine devices and that Carrier iQ’s software is “pre-loaded” on its phones rather than embedded at the manufacturing level, providing more limited access to user data. Read statements from T-Mobile and Motorola after the break.

Overall, Motorola’s response was very brief.  Motorola embedded Carrier iQ’s software on only four of its phones at the request of Sprint and AT&T, including the Admiral and Titanium from Sprint and the Bravo and Atrix 2 from AT&T.  Beyond that, however, Motorola claims that they really do not know anything else. “Motorola Mobility neither received nor had access to any data collected by the Carrier IQ software, with the exception of approximately 125 devices used for testing the Carrier IQ software implementation,” wrote Dale Stone, senior vice president of government relations for Motorola.  In regards to the number of devices, Stone advised that, “[a]s of the end of the third-quarter of 2011, we have sold a total of approximately 145,000 units of these models to our wireless carrier partners.”

T-Mobile provided a statement that Carrier iQ’s software is on nine phones: the HTC Amaze 4G; Samsung Galaxy S II; Samsung Exhibit II 4G; LG Doubleplay; T-Mobile MyTouch and MyTouch Q for LG; and the BlackBerry 9900, 9360, and 9810. The software was first installed in May 2011.  Thomas J. Sugrue, senior vice president of regulatory and legal affairs at T-Mobile, said T-Mobile installed Carrier iQ’s software by using a “pre-load” method rather than embedding it at the manufacturing level.  This “only allows access to the Operating System API data that is available to application developers,” Sugrue said. The embedded option, he said, “permits access to broader data.”  T-Mobile said about 450,000 of its customers has devices with Carrier iQ’s software installed.