With all the recent talk going on about CIQ (CarrierIQ) and HTC logging what we’re doing on our phones, my brain was finally jolted to a post I had made on Sprint’s forums over 2 years ago about this same exact thing.

I didn’t know enough to do anything about it back then as I was brand new to Android (I didn’t successfully remove CIQ until Fresh Evo 4.0.0.4 Beta back in April) but I just thought it would be fun to copy/paste the article here for nostalgia purposes. :)

The post back then got only 4336 views and 4 replies but is something that has turned in to one of the most talked about subjects today.

Oct 16, 2009 11:49 AM

Source: http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/23158

Ok so this is more of a joke than anything, but I thought this was pretty interesting. My assumption is that this is an application that just requires SenseUI / the entire HTC experience to work or something like that, but the name of it is a little strange! They probably shouldn’t call it it a check-in service!!

Home < Menu < Settings < Applications < Manage Applications < HTC Checkin Service

HTC Checkin Service
Version 0.1.0005
RAM usage – 34.85MB (so it’s doing a lot of something!) [this was on the CDMA Hero which only had 288mb]

Permissions:
Network communication - create bluetooth connections, full internet access.
Your location - coarse (network-based) location
Your google accounts - contacts data in google accounts, google calendar, google mail
Phone calls - modify phone state, read phone state
System tools - bluetooth administration, change wi-fi state, change your ui settings, modify global system settings, mount and unmount filesystems, prevent phone froms leeping, write access point name settings, write subscribed feeds, write sync settings
Your messages - modify gmail, read gmail
Services that cost you money - directly call phone numbers
Your personal information - read contactd data, write contact data
Hardware controls - change your audio settings, record audio

Let me say one thing. This is the exact reason that it can be a very bad idea to install applications that don’t come from the market (aka unknown sources).Those applications are not signed by Android and therefore can act in ways that they shouldn’t. If one of those applications were to gain access to this service then they could pull ALL of your information.

With that said… please don’t turn this in to a scare thread. HTC is NOT watching you (I hope ). Obviously every part of the HTC experience will require access to every part of your phone. If they didn’t get access to it then SenseUI wouldn’t work! Please visit http://developer.android.com if you have any questions on how programming with Android works. I’m only posting this for your information.

I hope this thread lightens up this forum a little bit. Right now it’s just filled with threats to HTC and Sprint about the battery life. 

If only I knew then what we know now we may have been able to stop all of this! Haha. Silly innocent me thinking that HTC wasn’t watching us. At least I threw an “I hope” in there!