Washington, Dec 4 (ANI): A California-based software firm that can monitor every keystroke users make on many popular smartphones, has struck back at critics who accused it of violating customers' privacy, saying it doesn't record or store users' private messages.
The company, Carrier IQ Inc, was in the middle of a privacy furor this week after an Android app developer posted a video purporting to show its software logging every key press, as well as the content of text messages and search engine queries.
Trevor Eckhart showed that Carrier IQ, a software package often used by US phone networks to monitor how phones are used and is installed as standard on phones such as HTC's handsets, Android handsets and some BlackBerries, can 'read' what users type.
The company has acknowledged that it collects a wide variety of smartphone usage data on behalf of carriers and phone manufacturers, but says reports about its data collection have been overblown, the Los Angeles Times reports.
"What is true is that there's a huge amount of information available to us on the device," Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ's vice president of marketing, said.
"But capturing keystrokes and text messages, email, audio and video is not what we do, and we've been absolutely adamant that we don't do these things," he added.
According to a promotional document on Carrier IQ's website, the company's software can "capture a vast array of experience data including screen transitions, button presses" and "device feature usage, such as camera, music, messaging, browser and TV." (ANI)
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