Apple Sued Over Carrier IQ Use

Apple is targeted by a lawsuit over unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone many of which are iPhone owners. At the heart of the suit is the Carrier IQ tool used in mobile operating systems, including the iOS.

Discovered in Google’s Android operating system and later in Apple’s iOS 5 betas, Carrier IQ is a diagnostics tool that “willfully violat[es] customers' privacy rights”, according to the law firms of Sianni & Straite LLP of Wilmington, DE, Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy LLP of Edison, NJ, and Keefe Bartels L.L.C. of Red Bank, NJ.

The suit acknowledges that “Carrier IQ Inc. was secretly tracking personal and sensitive information of the cell phone users without the consent or knowledge of the users.”

Apple is one of seven companies targeted by the Delaware suit. The Cupertino company has already officially responded to the phone tracking software scandal by pledging to remove Carrier IQ software from iOS in the next software update.