Apple has been named as a defendant in a class action lawsuit (alongside Carrier IQ, HTC, Samsung, and others), reports MacRumors, announced by three separate law firms, over the recent Carrier IQ tracking controversy.
Carrier IQ, which is pre-installed on a firmware level on many smartphones, with both carriers and manufacturers reportedly behind the inclusion, seemingly violates privacy rights be unlawfully tracking and logging data about smartphone owners.
Since Carrier IQ was discovered last week by a 25-year-old developer, the issue has seen a huge amount of attention, and even caught the eye of U.S. Senator Al Franken and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Fortunately, Apple has already abandoned Carrier IQ with iOS 5, and the version installed on iOS devices was much less capable than versions found on other handsets.
Personally, I’m glad to see this getting some legal attention – what’s most concerning is that neither hardware manufacturers nor wireless carriers have made any attempt to inform consumers that this software is running on their devices.
At any rate, it will be interesting to see how this controversy gets resolved.
