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Phone Encryption Services Undermined By Carrier IQ

January 14, 2012

The scandal surrounding the company Carrier IQ and their stealth, keylogging application found on many major Portable devices continues to raise issues about the privacy ethics of the mega Internet service and cell phone suppliers including Google and Apple. Requests by the FBI for this info about private citizens are also being brought to light. As well as keylogging (the recording of keystrokes) on phones and iPads, Carrier IQ, with the knowledge of the service suppliers employing them, supported the recording of phone calls, location tracking info, as well as in-bound text messages which could then be sent to the service providers.

What this implies is even “secure” applications running on these PDA or netbook devices have no valid encryption services to guard private data since the device is recording everything before it gets encrypted or sent. These application companies can’t be trusted any more than the carriers themselves for their ignorance in granting such free-for-all technologies access to user data in return for greater share of the market.

The old motto of technologists has long been K.I.S.S, or Keep it Simple, Stupid. I propose updating this chestnut to be “Keep Information Security Simple”.

The web programs and devices we’ve grown to like, such as Gmail, Droids and iPads, should cause us to question the basic moral right to privacy we will and should expect from the enormous firms to whom we are paying big bucks. Secure messaging applications running on these newer devices have a tendency to have a greater number of security holes than basic, proven secure websites. This is because the SSL encryption is constantly being challenged by hackers and the public. Furthermore, there are less third party companies coming between a user and the targeted recipient with simple, secure web applications vs. Handheld driven applications.

Basically, the more complicated a system and application is, the more opportunities there are for exploits and the loss of private information. Remember KISS: Keep Information Security Simple for truly secure encryption services!

Jonathan S. Lybrook is Founder and Executive Partner of WordSecure, LLC, makers of Secure Messaging and Encryption Services for business and HIPAA Email compliance.

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