The big news is that the carriers forced it onto almost all smartphones (Android, Blackberry, iPhone). The blame needs to be pinned on them.

I'm curious about which carriers.

Are we just talking about US carriers or carriers worldwide? I'd think "Carrier IQ" wouldn't fly under stricter European privacy laws (even if it is OK in the US, which some people say is an open question). Is that right?

Well, I don't know which carriers have installed CarrierIQ on their phones, but according to this: http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/1/2602532/verizon-carrier-iq... Verizon denies using or ever having used CarrierIQ.

Absolutely. That was the very question I thought of as I posted that. I have a suspicion it's US carriers.

Well I live in India and i will look for CareerIQ in my bro's galaxy. The handsets here are contract free and GSM.

in fact its probably the same exact carrier whose parent was given the right to spy on amercians for the us government after laws were broken..

We need to specify WHICH carriers forced it onto smartphones. Verizon is the biggest carrier in the US and they don't use carrier iq. (although they do put a ton of crap on phones) http://gigaom.com/2011/12/01/verizon-no-carrieriq-no-way/

I have a Samsung GalaxyS running Android on Rogers (rogers.com) up in Canada and there is no CarrierIQ installed. Maybe we need to create a spreadsheet so we can track which phones / providers have this installed.

I think Cyanogenmod builds also are CarrierIQ free.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices

As are MIUI builds which are based on Cyanogenmod.

I'd hope Google knew how to track users efficiently without third-party help.

CarrierIQ - does this mean that contract-free phones don't have it installed?

Of course not. If you bought the phone through a carrier that has CarrierIQ normally installed, then why would they make an exception for the 0.1% of customers who bought a smartphone off-contract?

So no, the name has nothing to do with it.

Who said anything about buying through a carrier?

You kind of implied it when you said contract-free instead of not from a carrier.

At least here in the States, the majority of contract free and prepaid phones for sale are associated with a particular carrier.

I avoided saying "unlocked" because it would imply it was locked at some point. What should I call them?

The convention I've seen is "SIM-free."

In Australia the retailers generally call it a 'handset only' purchase

Looking at the latest Wikileaks release (http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html) it makes me think that this Carrier IQ thing, if it is used for getting to our personal data, is just a pixel in the complete picture.

"We're still wondering why Google would reject Carrier IQ from its flagship devices but allow phones with the software to pass the various Android compatibility tests required to license its apps like Gmail, Google Maps, and Android Market."

Google doesn't include Bing in its flagship devices. That doesn't mean somebody can't install it later if they want to.