Apple Logging Locations of All iPhone Users

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that researchers have found a hidden file on all iPhones, iPads and any computers to which they synchronize, logging timestamped latitude and longitude coordinates of the user since June 2010. A tool is available on their website to check on your own."

Comments

ummm

[NEDHead]

Surprise!

Re:ummm

[EraserMouseMan]

Don't worry. Steve's just looking out for your user experience. If you really understood what this was about you'd be amazed at how Steve is just doing this so he can wow you and revolutionize your life. Now put the ear buds back in please.

Re:ummm

[FatdogHaiku]

Now put the ear buds back in please.

and push them in until they touch each other...

Re:ummm

[Abstrackt]

Apples 1984 commercial was the first thing I thought of as well. The irony is almost too much to bear.

Re:ummm

[jordan314]

Most people's backups are not encrypted. I just tried the app and it worked flawlessly from my my backups. You do not need to jailbreak to run the app.

Re:ummm

[duguk]

No surprise here. I posted about this ages ago, but everyone argued that I was talking out of my arse by a whole load of iPhone users.

We knew Apple were doing this nearly a year ago

Next, they'll be sharing it with their 'partners', and using it for direct advertising. You've already agreed to it in the terms.

Re:ummm

[msauve]

My impression is that it is a cache file which they fail to clean.

The article clearly states "[the file] is transferred across [to a new iPhone or iPad] when you migrate..."

That's not an uncleaned cache, it's a deliberately maintained database.

The FAQ which is pointed to states "it's an SQLite database file, you can use any standard SQLite browser...Open up the file, choose the 'CellLocation' table, and you can browse the tens of thousands of points that it has collected. The most interesting data is the latitude, longitude location and the timestamp." It also says "As far as we can tell, the location is determined by triangulating against the nearest cell-phone towers."

Backup encryption is something which must be enabled (how many iPhone users do that, or even know of it?), so your implying that the data is encrypted is misleading, as is the claim that a jailbreak is necessary. Finally, there's nothing to indicate your claim that this won't collect data when location services are turned off is correct.

Re:ummm

[Cali Thalen]

Reference yesterday's story...

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/04/19/2231240/Michigan-Police-Could-Search-Cell-Phones-During-Traffic-Stops

I wonder if this location data would be part of what could be extracted there...

Re:ummm

[NeverVotedBush]

Earlier on Slashdot...

"The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program. A US Department of Justice test of the CelleBrite UFED used by Michigan police found the device could grab all of the photos and videos off of an iPhone within one-and-a-half minutes. The device works with 3000 different phone models and can even defeat password protections. 'Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags,' a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device's capabilities."

Re:ummm

[Swave An deBwoner]

Some of them hold the phone incorrectly, so, yes :-)

Re:ummm

[sglewis100]

"Apple has location services as something that can be turned off completely" It's closed source, so how do you know it's not continuing to collect data, even if that collection isn't made visible to the user? How do you know that the file in question is a result of the location services which can be turned off?

Apple's Guy Tribble, VP of Software Technology gave senate testimony on the very subject.

Much worse than Google's WiFi tracking

[schwit1]

Tracking people's whereabouts is truly evil. Wait until the divorce lawyers start subpoena them for location data to help their clients.

Re:I wonder which government

[sakdoctor]

Do you really need to invoke a government conspiracy? This is Apple we're talking about.

Re:Gotta love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look again. There is no link to upload anything only a link to download the application.

So my phone tracks itself, big deal

[unassimilatible]

So you're telling me if someone physically steals my phone or computer, and is able to break the passwords, they can see private info about me? NFW!

I assure you all that if someone were to do that, I'd have a lot more to worry about than my PC or phone giving up my travel habits.

Re:So my phone tracks itself, big deal

[SJ2000]

Or if you're subject to Discovery or a subpoena.

Re:The data is on your phone

[FhnuZoag]

It's impossible to determine where this data has been sent. Any app has access to it. Access to this file itself is not logged. It could be sitting on the hard drives of any number of app producers.

Phone is tracking, Apple is not.

[chaim79]

Though it is a very fine distinction, Apple isn't receiving any of this information, it's simply being stored.

From the Article

Is Apple storing this information elsewhere?

There’s no evidence that it’s being transmitted beyond your device and any machines you sync it with.

As bad as some may play it, without Apple receiving this information it's simply information that is stored, not "Big Brother"/Apple monitoring your every move.

Can we start using examples other than Divorce?

[hellfire]

Okay I'm all for explaining why this is bad, but why the fuck do we insist as a group using the example of a private eye tracking down a cheating spouse for the purpose of divorce as a reason to take privacy concerns seriously? The average citizen is going to be like "Oh well I don't have to worry about that, I have nothing to hide from my spouse!" even if they are lying to themselves. The political and social leadership will be like "well then don't cheat and you'll be fine!"

WORST... EXAMPLE...EVAR...

Here's some better examples for this specific situation:
1) A burglar determining a pattern when you aren't home so they can rob your house.
2) A stalker determining the best place to attack you
3) Someone who doesn't like you smearing your character publicly simply because your phone walked by a strip club (he must have gone in, he's a sinner!!!), even though 2 blocks away is the hospice you volunteer once a week at.

Let's try to come up with better examples that make people actually care please?

Re:Can we start using examples other than Divorce?

[vlm]

Visiting the hiring interview room at a competitor on your day off, with your company issued must-carry phone? This could get really weird...
Insurance company requiring tracking data to prove you don't go to fast food joints or tobacco shops, and you do visit the gym regularly?
Police / employers harassing you when they download your coordinates and find out you're volunteering at the "wrong" political election office or you attend the "wrong" church? (Or more likely, at least in the backwards USA, the wrongness would be defined as not attending church at all?)
Company wants a record of exactly where your phone went on your "sick" day. God help you if you left the house to visit doctor or pharmacy, because thats not "staying home and resting".

Every day I'm happier I have an ipod touch to do i-stuff with, and a plain ole VM pay as you go phone for that old fashioned "telephone call" functionality. The coolest part is when I drain the ipod battery from screwing around with music / videos / games, I can still do the important stuff like make and receive phone calls. I know people whom absolutely squeal when angry birds fly off with their battery charge and then they can't talk on the phone or text for a couple hours. Lately I've been facetiming thru open wifis instead of making phone calls on my old fashioned cellphone, if everyone I knew did facetime, I'd probably ditch the phone entirely.

Re:Evil? Really?

[MacGyver2210]

There are varying degrees of many things, of which many subsets can be constructed.

Apple is a Tier-2 evil. They are more evil than the neighborhood bully, but they are less evil than...say, Hitler.

Just like evil, there are subsets of happy.

Think about "I just got an 'attaboy' from my boss" happy versus "I just got with this super-hot girl I've been into for a long time" happy.

Re:Do I have this right?

[drb226]

There is no evidence that this data is being sent to Apple or anyone else.

As the article illustrates, any app you install has easy access to this data.

Re:What the FUCK, Apple?

[Missing.Matter]

Location services serve a function. There still no good reason to log all of the data. This is not a solution.

There is more than that

[Anonymous Coward]

I am just looking into the file.

The database contains also a huge list of access points.

basically it seems that for each and every WiFi network the iPhone "sees" (not only if you join it, and even if the network is hidden)...the toy stores the Mac Address of the access point, timestamp of detection, coordinates (including height and accuracy), speed, ...

See table WiFiLocation
CREATE TABLE WifiLocation (MAC TEXT, Timestamp FLOAT, Latitude FLOAT, Longitude FLOAT, HorizontalAccuracy FLOAT, Altitude FLOAT, VerticalAccuracy FLOAT, Speed FLOAT, Course FLOAT, Confidence INTEGER, PRIMARY KEY (MAC));

Mine contains >50000 entries, basically I have the entire WiFi Map of Milano.... nice but, isn't this what Google was fined for doing ???

Interestingly, each and every iPhone user is doing the same "crime" committed by Google,, but unintentionally (and no, this does not seem to collect packets).

Andrea Cocito

Re:Where is this file on the phone?

[digismack]

/var/root/Library/Cache/locationd/consolidated.db

Re:Mac fanboys

[binford2k]

Actually come to think of it, it's the CARRIERS that benefit from this data, not Apple. It's not storing your GPS location ... just the location of the cell towers you've hit. So it's giving, essentially, a map of network load caused by your phone. Aggregated with other phones, this would be pretty interesting information to a carrier, you'd think. Perhaps carriers wanted Apple to do this kind of logging? But again, since the data isn't sent to anyone, it's still hard to see how this could be useful for anything other than a legitimate reason related to the phone itself (e.g. caching your previous locations so that it can more quickly use AGPS to pinpoint you again).

Nice logic. Except that the carriers already know with great precision where you've been anyway. They run the towers you connect to, remember?