Carrier IQ, HTC, Samsung face class action lawsuits over snooping

Once Senators starting demanding answers about what Carrier IQ was tracking, you just knew that lawsuits wouldn’t be far away. Carrier IQ, HTC and Samsung are all facing class-action lawsuits for allegedly violating federal wiretapping statutes.

The Carrier IQ software bills itself as a tool for mobile operators to better manage their networks and it is preloaded on many devices including those from Sprint and AT&T. It became controversial when it was discovered that this software could log and transmit your keystrokes, track your text messages and more without your permission. What makes it worse is that Carrier IQ and the carriers and handset makers using it were either unaware of these capabilities or lied about what it can do.

PaidContent says there are multiple lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for the violation and it hopes to include all U.S. residents with Carrier IQ on their devices. A lawsuit from St. Louis says:

Plaintiff, Erin Janek owns an HTC Android phone using the Sprint (NYSE: S) network. At all relevant times Plaintiff used her phone to electronically send over her cell phone network various types of private data. This data was not readily accessible to the general public. She did not know that Defendants were surreptitiously monitoring and collecting this data, nor did she give them permission to do so.

This story continues to get worse as more information leaks out and Carrier IQ is now waiting on a third-party audit of its software before it makes more public statements. The carriers and Carrier IQ have a lot of questions to answer.

[Via PaidContent photo via Shutterstock, zimmytws]