Submitted by Marshall Walker on
Apple was named with T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, HTC, Samsung and Motorola in a class action lawsuit on Monday. Sianni & Straite of Wilmington of Delaware and two other law firms from New Jersey (Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy of Edison and Keefe Bartels of Red Bank) filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in the District of Delaware. The lawsuit alleges Apple and other companies committed an "unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.”
The class action lawsuit is in response to the Carrier IQ software installed in various cell phones that logs the keystrokes, texts and geographic data of its users. Apple admitted using the diagnostics tool in the past, but said they never recorded "personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.” Apple also promised to remove the software from all their devices in a future firmware update.
Several companies came clean about using Carrier IQ's services after Trevor Eckhart released a YouTube video showing how the software tracked the sensitive information of mobile phone users. The controversy caused by the video forced Sen. Al Franken to contact Carrier IQ CEO Larry Lenhart to ask him what information his company stored (Read Franken's full letter here.). VP of marketing Andrew Coward told The Register Carrier IQ does log keystrokes and text messages, but a a majority of the information is discarded.