CarrierIQ: Your SmartPhone Is Spying On You

I've been tweeting about his for days, but it is now big enough that this issue requires a blog post. Independent security researchers (and hackers) have discovered a rootkit installed to most smart phones sold by the major American cellular carriers. Called CarrierIQ, this rootkit monitors and captures nearly everything you do on your smart phone including your location, every phone number you call, every web request you make, every key you type, and every App that you run. It has been found on Android phones, WebOS phones, BlackBerry phones, and other Nokia phones. It is unclear what information is actually being sent to each carrier, but there is the capability here for your carrier to literally know everything you do with your smartphone, whether you're on their network or on Wifi.

(Apple iPhones appear to have less-extreme version that tightly controls what is gathered and can be turned off in the Settings app. It is important to note that Google's stock Android phones (Google Nexus line, etc.) are clean of this rootkit. It is being added by manufacturers and carriers.)

This scandal is still blowing up, and it is unclear what the final fallout will be. But it appears your wireless carrier - in the name of improving service - may have been spying on nearly every aspect of your online life.

NOTE: To turn off CarrierIQ on your iPhone, go to Settings, General > About > Diagnostics & Usage, click "Don't Send". If you want to see what is being sent, check out "Diagnostic & Usage Data" instead. (At this point, I am leaving mine set to "Automatically Send."

HP buys Palm - Geeks rejoice

While the Apple Newton was the first attempt at a mass-market PDA, Palm was the company that really brought the idea of a handheld computing platform to the masses. Their "Palm Pilot" transformed the industry and reminded techies that simple is good. In recent years, Palm has fallen on hard times - mostly due to missteps by management teams who had no idea how to compete with the modern threats of Apple and Google - but after a few weeks of uncertainty HP has announced a purchase of Palm for $1.2 billion. This goes a long way toward ensuring some kind of future for the innovative company.

And as Sean has pointed out, this may lead to even more exciting possibilities like an HP branded iPad competitor running the WebOS!

Palm announces its Next Generation phone

Palm has been working a LONG time to produce a next-generation operating systems. First, we heard about Palm 5. It was originally going to be a revolutionary upgrade to the PalmOS but wound up being a simple evolutionary change called Garnet. Then we heard about Palm 6... but that fizzled out without making it onto a single device. Then we heard about the new Linux-based OS called ACCESS... but eventually Palm passed on that entirely. Now, finally, Palm has announced their "real" Next Geneation O/S called "webOS" and actually has a product that runs it, called the Palm PRE. The new webOS is webkit based (same as Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome) and is based around the idea of building Apps using web tools like HTML, JavaScript, and XML. The built-in apps are made to automatically and wirelessly sync with Facebook, Google, etc. to keep your contacts always in sync.

One interesting omissions, sure to raise the ire of Palm's few remaining supporters, appears to be PalmOS backwards compatibility. It appears from the press release that existing PalmOS apps do not work with the new system. This was probably necessary to bring about the radical changes needed for webOS (and probably why it is NOT called PalmOS 6 or 7). But if I had invested hundreeds or thousands of dollars in Palm software, I'd be put out to learn it was all throw-away.

Here is hoping this gives Palm a chance to survive in a future where Apple's iPhone and Google's Android increasingly dominate the landscape.