Find Your Android Phone Has Carrier IQ Fast, Free, And Easy

You believe Carrier IQ or not that its software, embedded on certain smartphones, Carrier IQ is an insanely invasive bit of software, and it’s on at least 100 million phones, entirely without the owners’ knowledge. Namely, there are ways to eliminate this question from the equation by detecting and removing Carrier IQ from your device.
Lookout Mobile Security app for both IPhones and Android smartphones have given you an easy way to do just that. If you use an Android device, there’s now a simple way to find out if Carrier IQ is already installed on your phone.

We first showed you how Carrier IQ works earlier this week . Carrier IQ is no longer supported as of iOS 5, and blocking its effects on your iOS 5-based iPhone is super-easy: Click on your Settings button, then General, About, Diagnostics & Usage, and select, your phone calls, your locations and even your text messages, perhaps keystroke by keystroke — and then stores the data and sends it to your mobile carrier.

Carrier IQ is a bit more integrated within the Android OS , that you'll need to root your device prior to attempting any removal efforts. One mobile developer, Trevor Eckhart, took it upon himself to find out how Carrier IQ actually works, and the Internet has been in an uproar over the blatant invasion of privacy ever since.

Install Carrier IQ Detector from the Android Market and fire up the app. That's it; you're done. When Carrier IQ was raising a $20 million finding round, the company said its software was already installed on 35 million cell phones through seven mobile vendors. Carrier IQ Detector immediately tells you whether Carrier IQ is installed on your phone.

Actually getting the software off your phone is, especially for the less technical, an almost impossible task involving rooting the phone and installing a new mobile OS. For that, you'll have to either flash your Android device with a custom ROM that doesn't contain Carrier IQ, and using the app's full version to remove Carrier IQ in a more automated method.

While knowing whether or not you’re currently running Carrier IQ is half the battle. But with Lookout's new easy-to-use detection app, at least you'll be able to find out whether your dollar was successful in helping you to strip this buried software off your device.