his findings , explain their use of the app or announce that they once used it but plan to get rid of it . And Friday morning , the controversy made its way into the courts . A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Carrier IQ , and phone makers Samsung and HTC , claiming that the app violates customer privacy . `` Given our dependence on smartphones , we rely on the assumption that our personal information is protected from third parties , '' attorney Steve W. Berman said in a written statement . `` Yet , it appears that Carrier IQ has violated this trust . '' Berman 's firm is representing several customers and is seeking to turn the complaint into a class-action lawsuit . The potential ramifications obviously had other privacy-minded folks concerned as well . `` A couple of things seem pretty clear , '' Jay Stanley , a senior privacy and technology analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union , said Friday . `` We do n't know what the company was storing or accessing or what their clients were storing or accessing , but
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The Web fallout continued Friday over news that a hidden app could be tracking smartphone users ' activity . Many bloggers and smartphone customers fretted about the privacy issues raised by Carrier IQ , an information-mining app secretly installed on many phones . But at the same time , other tech observers were beginning to say that some of those concerns may have been over the top . First , a recap : On Monday , researcher and developer Trevor Eckhart posted a 17-minute YouTube video apparently showing how the software -- designed as a diagnostic tool to find and help fix mobile network problems -- runs on his smartphone and logs every keystroke , every text and the full URL of every website he visits . News of the app 's existence on millions of phones had bounced around on tech blogs for a while . But attention skyrocketed this week when Eckhart posted his video . By Thursday , it had turned into a rapidly developing story in which new information seemed to surface hourly . Mobile carriers and smartphone makers rushed to dispute claims made by Eckhart and others who said they confirmed