Slashdot Mirror
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."
Tracking people's whereabouts is truly evil. Wait until the divorce lawyers start subpoena them for location data to help their clients.
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.
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.
Though it is a very fine distinction, Apple isn't receiving any of this information, it's simply being stored.
From the Article
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.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
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.
Apples 1984 commercial was the first thing I thought of as well. The irony is almost too much to bear.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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...
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
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
/var/root/Library/Cache/locationd/consolidated.db
http://www.hollowdepth.com