In a statement issued Wednesday morning, Apple said "The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it's maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and other executives also talked about the incident with All Things Digital blogger Ina Fried and with the New York Times. Apple admitted that there was a "bug" in the software that kept the file for too long and prevented users from keeping the data from being collected when turning off location services. Jobs insisted to the New York Times that "We haven't been tracking anybody" and added, "Never have. Never will."
Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, the researchers who originally found the file on their phones, praised Apple for fixing the problems but commented on the O'Reilly Radar blog that "Apple doesn't address our claim that this reveals sensitive information about your travels. At this point we're just relieved to get an explanation and a fix."
Call it what you want, but I had an iPhone with me on a bus trip recently from Boston to New York and as you can see from the map below, my route of travel was tracked. Sure, the phone didn't report my exact location, but it did give an approximate location which could be used by curious spouses, divorce attorneys, snooping bosses and others with access to one's phone or a computer synced to the phone to find out where someone may have traveled. Not shown is a detailed map of New York City which displays my approximate locations around the city during my two days in the Big Apple.
If you have an iPhone and a Mac you can download your own copy of iPhone Tracker. Click here for my previous coverage of the tracking issue.
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"No we don't!"
(cold war joke)
https://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-with-the-latest-iphone-tracking-discovery/
Also: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/04/26/apples-not-spying-on-you-youre-spying-for-apple/
That makes it really difficult -if not altogether IMPOSSIBLE- to tell which is being done to you.
The truth is that it's really useful for both corporate marketing purposes as well as the police-state initiatives that George W. Bush instigated.
I decided to stop fighting Microsoft years ago.
So, look on the bright side.
I kinda like targeted advertizing! I like it when Amazon suggests stuff that actually interests me and I had no idea existed. My GPS even pops up coupons when I get near a business that might be of interest. Well ... creepy ... but ... OK ..... I'll go with it.
It's a little disconcerting when the Charmin ads pop up .... well .... when you might .... ah ....
What I really do not understand is all those ads targeting male .... well, I can't figure out how they could tell over the Internet ... never mind.
This is nonsense. It's one of those "nothing to see here" moments in IT where someone found something and, ill-intended or not, wrote about those findings in a way that made it seem larger than reality would otherwise suggest. There's loads of data on any computing device being collected at any given moment and unless it's a trojan you downloaded, chances are it is meaningless, only used as a diagnostic or for some simpler purpose. If I hack your iPhone, trust me, the last thing I care about is where you ate lunch.
....Unless you were an abusive husband. I trust the gov't more than the jack**ses I meet on the street.
The case for smartphones lies in this equation: networked data plus location equals useful information. The traffic on the network is less, the results arrive faster if the location does not need to be recalculated via gps and cell tower strength readings and if a new calculation is saved unencrypted on the phone.
Which is why we are finding that all the other smartphone makers are caching location data, though Apple, as it admits, was not purging old data.
So, there it is: a clear cost/benefit proposition. Make your choice.
Incidentally, to determine old data, some correlation of date and location needs to be saved, so it can determine what data to toss. Save all wheres and the phone need not care about when. Food for thought, privacy worriers.
Regarding your trip: yes, your phone knew you were in those locations. You ran an app and you saw your locations. Then you published your aggregated data so now I and thousands of others know your locations. If there are any consequences to this information being public, it's pretty much your fault. But, I think you're safe. I don't think any one cares. I don't. Apple doesn't. You would know if you have jealous spouses or divorce attorneys within your sphere of concern.
Let's say the NSA is putting together a "population" database which records electronic footprint of those citizens that have these devices.
Let's say that database starts with a compilation of all government records under you name.
Let's say that the Corporate State routes all of their customer data to NSA for inclusion on that database.
Now, since NSA (a remarkable evil enterprise funded on the tax dollar and reporting to The Pratt House and the House of Bilderberg (the NSA head attends their PRIVATE and POWERFUL meetings)) is pulling all this data in from all of their listening posts, satellite's, phone, fax, email and GPS and processing right down to your personal identity, EVEN YOU MIGHT START GETTING CONCERNED.
After all NSA HAD to build two new DATA FARMS in Idaho and Florida just to house all of this vast data in real time.
So let this man make his statement.
Google (Schmidt hold membership in the House of Bilderberg), Apple, RIM, Military and all of the Corporate Communication carriers route everything to NSA.
LOCATION SERVICES is a both a front and cover story used by Google/Apple and obviously a person like you laps up with the utmost efficiency!
Ridiculous. Thanks for calling them on their BS.
THAT would be interesting...
More Coffee...
R/ PRONESE
Tell me something - if you did a google search for all the Starbucks around you, are you going to "worry" about the security of your coffee preferences at a certain time of day? Because Google has that information.
I suggest you read Macworld's explanation of how Assisted GPS and location technology works before making hay over this "security" issue.
http://www.macworld.com/article/159528/2011/04/how_iphone_location_works.html
Seriously, if someone stole your iPhone or broke into your Mac/PC, the LAST thing a potential thief would be the locations of WiFi hotspots and cell towers near where you've been.
They might be interested in the your Contacts, your incoming/outgoing call list, the autosaved login to your FaceBook account via the FaceBook app, and a whole host of other things much more valuable than anonymous trilaterization data.
This "security" issue you are arguing is wholly RIDICULOUS compared to all the personally information that will be right in front of the thief without needing to jailbreak the iPhone or break into your computer.
It's like worry about the "security issues" of a thief rifling through your junk mail pile after breaking into your home. Please have some perspective.
Then we can all be "SAFE"?