[General Topics] dbaybay:
Well here is my experience with Sprint. I called customer support to find out how to remove this and the first woman I spoke to was incredibly rude and did not help at all. She would not even send me a printed copy of my contract, but instead referred me to a generic copy of the contract on the website - not even found in my account but under the plan. When she asked if she resolved my issues, I obviously said absolutely NOT. I was then forwarded to customer relations to find out why she didn't help me - this women was no better. She told me there is no way to opt-out unless I root my phone which would indeed void my manufactors warranty as well as my Insurance which I pay $8 x 2 ($16) a month for.

She did however tell me that there is an application on the market to remove CIQ called "Logging Test" which costs $1. It requires root access however, so we were back to square one. She told me that if I root my phone and anything happened I could accidently drop it in the toilet and they would still replace it since it wouldn't power on, they wouldn't know I rooted it. Little does she know, that application is for HTC Devices ONLY and not the Epic 4G Touch, in fact, if you attempt to use it on the Epic 4G Touch it will indeed (soft) BRICK your phone. WOW! Thanks Sprint, instead of giving me a simple opt-out to illegal wiretapping, you'd prefer that I root my phone, void my warranty, pay for an application to remove CIQ which will indeed (soft) BRICK my phone. What. The. Hell.

She then transferred me to another person, this time a technical support guy higher up I'm assuming. He gave me the same statement that Sprint released a few weeks ago about how they do not collect personal information and that "I need to do my research". The conversation with him went from bad to pretty decent actually when I explained to him what CIQ is, that they can log information on phones that are deactivated or on Wi-Fi networks, that it logs every single keystroak made and that is basically a rootkit. That the U.S. Senate has already sent them a letter demanding to know what information they collect, that a class action lawsuit is coming, which specific carriers have it on their phones and which don't and video proof of the CIQ App logging every bit of information on the phone (including hitting the home key, back key, dialing a number, sending a text and displaying https (secure) logins in PLAIN TEXT.

By the end of the conversation I had woken him up to what CIQ was and proven that I had done my research. He ended up being very nice and interested once he realised that the e-mail he got from Sprint HQ to tell customers was utter bull****. However, the fact of the matter is, they have no way at customer or technical support to help you opt-out - the only way to get it off your phones at the moment is to root your phone and install a custom version (ROM) of Android that does not have CIQ pre-packaged. Any other methods to remove it will be unsucessful and could brick your phone. If you root your phone or install a custom version of Android you have voided your warranty and if you pay insurance, too bad, it voids that too.

Best of luck to everyone who is stuck in a contract with Sprint. I just signed up 4-5 days ago so I still have a chance to cancel my contract and head on over to Verizon who does not install CIQ on their phones (see their statements in the news today).