Carrier iQ, a company responsible for developing smartphone debugging software that came under intense scrutiny in 2011, has shut down following the acquisition of some of its assets and staff by AT&T. The news was reported by TechCrunch, which was able to confirm that Carrier iQ assets and talent have indeed been snapped up by AT&T:
TechCrunch has confirmed that AT&T has acquired certain software assets from Carrier iQ, along with some staff. The site itself — and the wider company, it seems — has gone offline.
“We’ve acquired the rights to Carrier iQ’s software, and some CIQ employees moved to AT&T,” an AT&T spokesperson tells us. AT&T signed on as a customer years ago to use the CIQ software across phones on its network to troubleshoot wireless quality for its customers, and the spokesperson went on to explain that this still the case.
As you may recall, Carrier iQ was the subject of much debate in 2011 after it was revealed that its software was running on a large number of devices from several major carriers. The crux of the fear was that Carrier iQ’s software could potentially be used to spy on text messages, phone calls and more, with no way for users to opt out.
For their part, some carriers claimed that their use of Carrier iQ was purely as a form of diagnostics to help troubleshoot and solve problems on their networks — a claim that largely lines up with AT&T’s statement.
Source: TechCrunch