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Is Apple Tracking iPhone Users Through IMEI?
ariefwn writes ""As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy, its been proven that Apple tracks iPhone usage and tracks IMEI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide. Hidden in the code of the 'Stocks' and 'Weather' widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects. I wonder if there will be any implications to owners of hacked iPhones..."
You signed an agreement when you bought the device.
When you interact with Apple, we may collect personal information relevant to the situation, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and contact preferences; your credit card information and information about the Apple products you own, such as their serial numbers and date of purchase; and information relating to a support or service issue.
However people will expect this to be at manual support time and not all the time.
liqbase
I'm waiting for someone to respond with an eight page analysis of why this isn't really a big deal, complete with immaculate formatting and excellent grammar. Then everyone simply looks at the length of the post and says, "aha! see, it ISN'T a problem! Not that I read it all, but I'm with *this* guy!"
Don't let me down.
At least it's Apple tracking you, not AT&T?
Wait...
Exactly what are they tracking though? My location, my history, my music? What?!
Of course, if I happened to be running the Stocks and Weather applications on my iPod Touch it wouldn't have an IMEI number to send, would it? Not that I am running those applications on my ipod, because that of course isn't allowed.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
That's iMEI !
Like all others Apple iThings.
-- Rastignac was here.
While I'm not an economist or stockbroker, it seems to me that if apple knows which shares iphoners are most interested in, at a given time, this is extremely valuable information, e.g. to spot trends. Can't be bothered to read the user-agreement (have no iphone) but curious to know whether it gives apple the right to sell this data on to large brokers or even act upon the intel themselves?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Ever think maybe there was a more benign reason for this? Like to perhaps help in the retrieval of a stolen phone? Granted, it is probably not great for privacy, but if explicitly disclosed a savvy phone stealer could just disable or modify the apps. *This by no means excuses apple's privacy violations.
Get a web developer
So, should people start wrapping their iPhones in tinfoil?
You could just read all the comments about Blizzard's Warden program for WoW, as they will likely be strikingly similar.
"As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy,"
Reynolds doesn't make tin foil. They make aluminum foil! There is a big difference between Tin and Aluminum!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There's a substantial difference between receiving information and tracking people. Do the land-line phone companies "track" the calls you make? Sure, they use it to send you a bill, but most people don't seem to think it's a privacy violation. The author does not, as he claims, have "proof" that Apple track iPhone users, simply that they have the wherewithal to collate information about the services used by people if they could be bothered.
The IMEI number is there to facilitate identifying mobile devices to the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) for the purpose of charging for services. Your IMEI goes out every time you connect to the EDGE network or any GPRS service anywhere in the world, and is (and always has been) logged by the phone company, irrespective of what brand of phone you have. It's always been possible for the phone company, or anyone with the right data sharing relationship with the phone company (e.g. Apple), or the police with a court order, or the CIA/FBI/KBG/MI6, to link this to the IP address assigned to the mobile device, and from there to server logs. People who worry about this shouldn't just be wearing tin-foil hats, they should be putting tin foil around their phones too.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Just use your phone in a Faraday cage, and they can't track you at all.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The Apple IMEI is TEA encrytped according to the phone's hardware ID and NOR ID. Both of these numbers can be found with a few tools found at iphone-elite.org. The IMEI lives at 0xA003FAB00 address. All you need to do is write out your seczone (0xA003FA000), TEA encrypt a nice Motorola RAZR IMEI number at offset 0xB00, and write it back to your NOR...and voila...your iPhone now looks like a Motorola RAZR.
New? When did he stop?
Maybe they just mesh the IMEI number with location data provided by the GPS and/or AT&T to give you weather information based on where you are located at the time. Ever seen the ad where Google is used to find local eating joints? Don't know about you but I did not see any kind of location information getting entered and so some kind of location info is getting used.
And you know that every ISP keeps records on what phones ping what cell towers and your ISP( AT&T ) already is known to have been very willing to hand out cell records.
So get a pre-paid phone at Walmart if you want to limit your track-ability. After all, getting a "smart" phone from Apple with all the locked down and tied to Apple features isn't a clue that they just might track things? I hope you don't touch anything running Microsoft code.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Ah, but which quotes I'm looking at is another can of worms. It implies that I either own stock in that company, or plan to. I realize that I could just be watching the stock "for fun," but aggregating this type of information to have the "big picture" is the problem.
And according to a German security site, the ID is the same for every phone that was tested. Conspiracy hats off. Case closed.
Maybe now we can discuss if the Kindle knows which pages you're lingering over and transmits suspicous activity to the NSA...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.