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iPhone and Location: Don't Panic
stonemirror writes "There's a lot of blind panic out there over the discovery of a database file on the iPhone which contains dated location information. Without actually looking at the data, a lot of folks have proclaimed that the 'iPhone is tracking your every move.' I actually did take a look at the data, and it's not doing anything like that."
worried about this at all (runs and hides)
You got the touch!
This story is entirely anecdotal. Sure, it may not be tracking your "every move" but we have no way of knowing if this guy's phone was even on for his whole train ride (for example).
His conclusion is "We don't know why Apple is collecting this information but it's not a big deal." What the hell? How do we know it's not a big deal?
Sorry, Apple, you guys fucked up. A random blog-pologist isn't going to save this one for you.
The point is not what it's currently doing, the point is (a) what COULD be done (by Apple, a malevolent third party, whomever) simply because this information exists when it should not and (b) whether this level of personal tracking information should be stored in the first place without it being clear to the user.
it's doesn't track every single move you make, but it's enough to know what you do, find patterns, and infer a lot of incorrect assumption.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All the post shows is that the tracking still happens, it just isn't very accurate.
The data seems good enough to tell where you've been, just maybe not good enough to track your exact whereabouts by the minute. So maybe it takes note of the position at the times the GPS chip already happens to be active, and not constantly at regular intervals like a proper tracker would.
Still that seems to do nothing to disprove that the phone's location is being logged often enough to figure out where you've been, and to me it still amounts to a huge violation of privacy.
He mentions Android doing the same. That's no excuse, if Android does that it also should stop doing it.
Think about it. Can you think of ANY reason beneficial to the consumer of the iPhone to record this information? It's a marketing goldmine, it could be used in a lawsuit against you, it could be used to profile you in some manner. None of these things have a positive benefit for the consumer.
Maybe some guy had a train ride that had pretty inaccurate GPS results. I don't know about you, but when I'm navigating by GPS it's fabulously accurate so I'm not quite sure what he's trying to prove. Maybe it had something to do with being inside a giant metal train in the middle of nowhere? Who knows.
Still waiting for an Apple statement on why (is it a bug in the opt-in? why?), but there are some things that just a bit of rational thinking would do about this...
First - it can't use GPS - otherwise your battery will be dead in a few hours. So its location mechanism must be non-GPS based. Common reports are that it's based on the towers your phone attaches to.
Second - it's probably not recording all the time. Again, your battery will be dead way too quickly because powering up the main CPU to record the data down into the filesystem database takes a lot of power. It's probably recording the times you actually are using the phone - playing music, watching movies, surfing, using an app, etc. Locked and quiescent, it's probably not recording anything.
This would explain the widly different results people are seeing. Some people get tons of missing tracks because their phone's in standby state, and any towers you pass by are lost.
Others see their every move because their phones are playing MP3s and other things, where the main CPU is alive and can do these things.
Still doesn't make it right, though. But some food for thought on why people seem to have wildly different results.
Phone companies are also tracking you. Nobody's raising questions about that. I agree, that file should not exist and could be abused. But so could the data collected by phone companies. If you are going somewhere you don't want people to know you've been, turn off your cell phone. It's that simple.
Doesn't matter. Everyone who wants to believe it already does, and no amount of proof is going to change their minds. Fox News runs retractions all the time, and still a quarter of the country believes that Obama was not born in America. The cult of Apple Haters are the ones with the reality distortion fields.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
This database has been known for some time anyway. Interesting that the story really took off just now. For another good analysis, check out what Alex Levinson, a security researcher who's looked at this extensively already, has to say:
https://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-with-the-latest-iphone-tracking-discovery/
sounds like a good reason to stick with my stupid phone.
Interestingly, TFA contains a link to an Android version of this as well. Anyone try it? Does it contain similar information?
It's interesting that on /. when the Fukushima reactor issue began, there appeared to be two camps forming: one that said, "maybe we should be concerned about this,' and another that said, "fucking libtards are going to use this as an excuse to push for tougher limitations on the expansion of nuclear power in other countries!"
/. users land on that chart. I wonder how many people who are vigorously defending nuclear power are busting a blood vessel over this iPhone thing.
With this issue, the two camps appear to be coming down to, "this may not be a huge issue; hopefully Apple will begin truncating this file with an upcoming update" and "fucking Apple fanbois will take anything that His Steveness rams up their rear! This is an outrage!"
It'd be interesting to track the outrage quotient on various issues and see where various
The CB App. What's your 20?
Im being tracked? Are you serious? I never would have guessed they would wanna know where I am or why.
- Mayor of Mom's Basement
Selling 5 lb steel sleeves people could carry their iPhones around in, which would guarantee their privacy. :)
Would aluminum foil work, too? I could go for that sleek brushed aluminum look :)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Given that the article writer comments that this stuff IS present on android... seems most likely that the google maps + built-in mobile phone pos tracker gizmo, is the culprit for this.
It's still illegally (hey, the gov't and corps get to stick that word in everywhere, why not me) capturing and storing unauthorized (there's another one) data. Personal devices should never be doing this. The only logs that should be kept at all is for "history" features, and those should be optional as well, with a global "off" switch in a general settings menu.
So, how many of those people that are up in arms use FourSquare, Gowalla, Facebook checkins, Path, Twitter etc?
With my forensics hat on it is an interesting set of data.
Don't let facts get in the way of the "I HATE APPLE" herd mentality on /.
The hysterics might go away a bit if Apple would tell us what it is for, and why it is plaintext. My concern is that if the data is being collected just because it can be, like when google stole everyones email using their cameras car, that is a pretty silly thing to do. If it is just a collection of access points, the tell us. My fear is that Apple is not telling because it is a basis for some sort of scary experimental feature that they want to keep secret for the time being.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
almost everybody knows there's no where left to hide for 99.999% of us, which includes the entire genuine native population, the unarmed & bunkerless refugees from southern hillary & billions of others, whether or not one counts the growing mormormonic crowd, from mebotuh.
so endless suffering (giving it back to god et al) is all but guaranteed for us unchosens, even on fallout free friday. hold on to your hymenaughtically sealed catechisms.
I'm pissed off. I don't care if it only records 1 coordinate per day. I should have every right not to have my location recorded in an unencrypted file without my knowledge, period.
This article states exactly what we assumed was happening. Storing location data. Although intended as a 'defense' you've simply confirmed that the phone is doing what apple intended it to do. Store location data, obfuscated away from the user, and then persistently migrate that data.
With the data retention directive in the EU, the government is already tracking your phone's location. Maybe you should do the same if you at some point need to prove the government wrong?
On are more serious note, could this file be a fallback for apps that use location based services in iOS? Say an app uses the API to find the current position. iOS tries to fetch the current position using GPS or cell tower position, and if that somehow fails or takes time, it checks this file as a last resort. The file contains historical information as I understand it, so obviously it contains more info than it should.
This database file that you're all banging on about? It's likely that all it is is a SQLite database or something along those lines that stores your data locally. (I'm sure that somebody has pointed this out already, and if they have, then I sincerely apologise for not trawling through the hundreds of panic-stricken comments.) It's highly unlikely that your data is being accessed remotely, downloaded, analysed and sent or sold on to interested parties without your consent. That would probably be illegal.
If you use your phone or tablet to access the Internet, you have to be assigned an IP address in the same way that you would if you were accessing the Internet from your computer or laptop. That IP can be tracked to a specific location. (The idea that people think they're surfing the Internet anonymously - well, I for one am stunned by the notion.) As the owner of a website, I find it very useful for tracking and banning malicious users who access my site using their phones as well as their laptops.
My advice to you? Stop panicking. Wait for an official statement. And if that doesn't happen, wait for news that the people who have spread this disinformation are being sued.
And how do you know that your dumbphone doesn't cache any location data in a retrievable format?
If you are going to have an affair, leave your smart phone at home. Won't be long before this is used in a divorce settlment, methinks.
Better advice - don't have an affair, however 50% of marriages end in divorce, so that's probably not the logical solution.
The info on Android phones is totally different from iPhones. The infamous iPhone log file records your complete geo-location history since you started using your phone. The Android log file just records your recent coordinates and it overwrites itself regularly.
So even if you get root access on an Android phone, you only end up getting your current location. Most people allow apps to have that permission anyways.
The info on the iPhone is a huge privacy concern. The Android file is a non-issue.
No. Apparently the West has some people who don't know what the work hysterical means. Seriously, no sane people could call any of those article hysterical, hell you would be hard pressed to call them sensational.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A "Don't Panic" story? On a Thursday? I don't think I'll ever get the hang of these.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Never Jailbreak you fooool!
His defense of the data tracking should be taken with a grain of salt, he plainly states that he was an employee of Apple at one time.
His Faq
http://caffeine.shugendo.org/about//.
If you arent made aware of it, and able to turn it off - then it's intrusive.
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts", Earl Weaver - Legendary Coach of the Baltimore Orioles
OMG THE INTERTUBES ARE FINDING ME OUT!
Oh wait, it's a GSM phone. The network already knows where you are.
Maybe it's tracking roam points?
Anyone can look at the consolidated.db file and see that it's actually just the best-guess coordinates of the cell towers the phone has established connections with, one entry per tower. These are tower, not user coordinates and so may be miles from the user's position. Plus, old data is overwritten by new since towers get only one entry.
Since tower triangulation requires a database pairing base station ID with coordinates, Apple appears to merely be caching this data for quicker location rather than having to access on off-phone database unnecessarily.
This seems more to user's benefit than detriment.
Talk about going full retard. You should really figure out what you're investigating before you go and investigate.
He is David "Lefty" Schlesinger, a fellow who worked for Apple for ten years.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'd really like to have a low-battery-impact location stream for my phone, but my iPhone 4 apparently has this logging feature turned off, because the CELL_LOCATION table on my device is empty.
Anyone know how to turn it on?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's a shame that you don't live out the first part of your username...a real damn shame.
It's "Mostly Harmless".
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
TFA seems only to prove that Apple is not 'tracking your every move' in the literal sense, they are just 'tracking your every move within the accuracy a phone on standby is able to, aggregated to a weekly basis'. Oh, well that's ok, if it's that inaccurate, surely my privacy isn't threatened! The writer is an apologist for Apple - after all, why end it with 'well if that argument didn't convince, someone else is doing it too! If everyone's doing it, it must be right!' (majorly paraphased).
People are also concluding that this data isn't 'phoned home'. But I don't believe they have the sourcecode for the software on their iphone, and if they did, that they have looked through it.
And as for the parent - your 'cell'phone provider needs to know where you are in order to supply your 'cell'. Not saying that justifies them keeping a record of it, but on the other hand, your bank has a record of all the transactions you have made involving your bank account. I'm not sure what justification a cellphone maker has to record your whereabouts.
It doesn't matter, your carrier is caching your cell location and storing it in a database anyways. Remember the PATRIOT act?
Yes, the GPS on board the iPhone is much more precise, but ANY cell phone's locations is still tracked by the networks.
Cell towers know what phones are connected to them. There are also multiple towers tracking your phone at once (that way you can travel without dropping a call (supposedly)).
Does anyone really believe this info is not logged somewhere?
What's to prevent Google from uploading the contents of that file to its master Big Brother server right before the file is wiped from your device?
Similarly, if Apple never uploads the contents of the file off of your device and it is inaccessible to apps, then how is that a security leak?
Apple confirmed this behaviour from iPhones almost a year ago... /.:
It was even a story here on
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/07/20/0250203/Apple-Lays-Out-Location-Collection-Policies
Yes, it says that pretty clearly, right there on the blog.
In the FAQ. Nowhere in the summary or in the linked article do I find the sort of disclaimer that any reputable journalist with a conflict of interest such as yours would add. I'm not saying, "this guy is an ex employee of Apple so don't listen to a word he says." I'm just adding the sort of disclaimer that you, as a blogger and not a trained journalist, most likely simply forgot to add. You're welcome.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's not about the frequency or accuracy of how the phone is tracking people, it's that face that it's doing it period. I'm sure it's a standard feature related to diagnostics or cell tower use that's in every phone, but I'd be interested in an explanation from technical people for what it's actual purpose is.
I take it you haven't heard of Google Latitude? It does pretty much what you're talking about, only intentionally, and with the consent of the user. I find it's actually quite useful.
https://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-with-the-latest-iphone-tracking-discovery/
According to Apple, Apple sends itself your precise location data and shares that location data with whoever it wants to...
http://markey.house.gov/docs/applemarkeybarton7-12-10.pdf
As far as I know, Apple isn't the phone company and shouldn't be in the business of tracking its users from cell tower to cell tower or Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi.
What if Toyota or GM or Ford started tracking the users of its cars? How freaky would that be? Actually, if they partner with Apple, they can track you in your car. That Orwellian 1984 Ad from Apple, back in 1984, really makes sense now...except the roles are reversed. If Google does this too, then Rotten Google indeed.
Precise Orwellian location tracking, massive sales in authoritarian China...hmm...
http://techland.time.com/2011/04/21/iphone-growth-suddenly-soaring-in-china/
= 9J =
I think it is worthy for iphone owners to go "hysterical" by taking necessary steps to disable this kind of tracking, or have apple correct this excessive tracking.
Ok already, I'll go look... just did a backup here at work and extracted the consolidated.db file (AT&T 3Gs iPhone).
There are 28862 rows of data for me.
I'm on a PC so I found this nice little tool that plots google map coordinates.
The majority coordinates are clustered around my work and my home, but scattered around a 1/2 mile radios or so.
You can clearly see when I took a road trip around the western US last year (the path I took and when I was where in Oregon, California, Nevada, etc...).
More interestingly, you can see where in France I was last September, so this is not limited to US borders or AT&T.
The data comes in bursts, and even has a bunch of clustered coordinates with the exact same time code. I'm surprised they don't store the averaged weighting of them by HorizontalAccuracy to get a more exact location. I wonder if each data point is somehow significant for future processing of location.
I'd wager that most mobiles from the pre-smartphone era also maintain some kind of tower cache. I'd also wager that at least one of them also has some kind of bug where old cache entries live for way longer than they should.
I'm currently working on a windows tool that displays the data on a google maps basis.
If you browse through the file with a sql browser you find several tables and among them are; celllocationdata,wifilocationdata and locationdata.
The cell tables seem to contain a lot of cell towers you have met, but not all and the wifi tables contain information about accesspoints, the location table is actually empty.
Multiple towers carry the same timestamp, so probably recorded at the same time.
Interesting data, and it does tell you a lot when put on a map, but not with a lot of certainty.
I can't understand the stir that this has caused. I use the find my iPhone-iPad feature of mobile me as well as Evernote on my iPad. All very useful and have incorporated this data. I would prefer that my whereabouts are tracked. The next story on this will be someone being found using their latest long/lat. Do you really believe that our lives are that private, or need to be?
Read the 6th page of this document: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2011/04/applemarkeybarton7-12-10.pdf
You're all idiots, stop whining and buy something other than an iPhone.
For anyone who thinks that this is no big deal, I agree with you, it isn't one now.
That will all change the first time the information is subpoenaed in a divorce case. Then it will be an incredibly huge deal.
This sentence no verb.
Get over it.
...) Your ISP does much the same thing. How are they less dangerous to your privacy?
When you decided to turn on a cell phone, you gave up any semblance of privacy that your location has. Worst of all, that data isn't stored in a file you can clear on your phone...It is stored in servers at kind and gentle companies like AT&T and Verizon where it is imminently available to most any agency that needs it.
Google sets cookies in your browser and tracks your location by IP address on every query you make (or map you hit or gmail you read or
If you really want to remain anonymous and not be tracked then don't have or use a cell phone or 3G data service. Don't have any internet service. Constantly clear your browser temp files/data and store them only in a ram disk. Also, change your mac address every time you connect in any way to the internet. Better yet. Pick a random library and use their computer.
Staying away from credit/debit cards would be a good idea as well. Just use cash and buy gift cards.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
this has been going on fore ever. no we aint using this. bs. i found a nice high end watch a couple of months ago. after posting to craigs list lost and found to try to find the owner all my sidebar ads are for watchs now. no kidding does'nt matter witch sight. yes they are using it,yes they are using it,yes they are using it. and now they know where you've been. regards mike
is why Apple and law enforcement cannot use this data to locate stolen phones.
So you're saying the iPhone is mostly harmless, then.
okay - so this guy (didn't) figure out that it might be tracking antenna locations rather than true GPS. Interesting is the gaps in the data - maybe there's an app that is dumping the data. And it only logs when that app is running. It is funny how lack of information led to so many conclusions on his part.
OR - maybe it is logging the locations of specific antennas - such as those that have known GPS locations.
My buddy at work dumped the info on his iPhone. It shows lots if data for LA and Las Vegas - and he's never been to either place (we joked maybe it was the FedEx truck delivering his phone - but we're on the east coast). However it does clearly show his drive to Florida down the east coast last year.
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The GP deserves some of your points.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Sheesh, my bad...
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
My guess is that the data is fetched to the phone when other means of positioning fails. This data is probably not your location, but the location of nearby Wifi hotspots. By using the nearby Wifi hotspot locations the phone still approximates your location, which is ofcourse neat. According to the update in the article, Android phones would seem to do the same.
Buffering data on the device makes sense. Downloading it every time you visit a location be much bigger privacy issue. Ofcourse downloading it in the first place would reveal your approximate position to Apple (or is it Google?). In my opinion, there is two things that could be improved: 1) disabling of Wifi hotspot positioning entirely and 2) expiration of data (shorter, if there already is expiration) of maybe one month to a couple of months.
I don't have an iPhone so I have not analyzed any data, but this would seem logical to me. My bets are that this is not some evil scheme to "track your every move", so calm down.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
In nowadays everyone want to spy you...
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
The data shown kinda reminds me of parallel processing. Where you can use idle bandwidth of a set of devices to examine large amounts of data. If you think about the unused processing potential of all iPhones across the world then you can quickly realize that this can easily be used as one of the largest computers in the world, and it comes at little cost to apple.
The fact that the device contains data not unique to that phone indicates that it is processing data of other devices when it is not processing it's own data. Think about the massive loads of demographic data available if you were to monitor the millions of devices worldwide, then have the phones themselves process the data for you. It's like a free massive database.
As for the gaps in the data. Why do you need to process common data? If you know someone rides the same train just about every day it's just redundant data in your database, it makes sense not to store this data.
The problem is that this is the only way to verify it is to actually disassemble the entire firmware of the device and look for ruteens that relate to this data and/or to parallel processing. Fortunately doing this is not illegal, you are allowed to disassemble a device or software for educational purposes. And i would consider finding out what a device is doing with an unknown data set educational.
iphones and iPads not only save your location, they probably also send it back to Apple, to let them build a database of wifi networks without any cost, according to F-Secure: http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002145.html
"I haven’t done a raw dump of the locations in the file"
So that first quote would be a lie then?
Puzzle Daze is now my job
privacy privacy privacy privacy, you don't have privacy in a electronic world and thats a big period. If you want privacy don't own a cell phone. If you want privacy use only cold hard cash and not debit and credit for purchases. If you want privacy do NOT use any store reward programs. Don't use the internet. When your cell phone is on, your being tracked, be it by the phone itself or the cell phone companies. When you use debit or credit to purchase anything your being tracked. When you use reward programs or electronic fare systems on transit you are being tracked. Every website you go to your being tracked. Seriously most people think they have privacy but they don't. The privacy you have is only limited to the documents and policies of the companies that you deal with and local laws. The privacy you have with any form of electronic systems is what and what a company can do with your personal info its collecting. The only true privacy is to give up the electronic world. Think about your car GPS system. It remembers all the addresses you put in it. Every element of the electronic world will have these issues. Physical security is about the most important thing you can do to protect yourself. Don't lose your stuff for others to play with.
I looked at the data that my iPad collected. It's only data from the few occassions when I used 3G. If it would also collect information from WiFi, it would have recorded that, say, I was in Canada where I used the hotel WiFi but not 3G. But no location information was recorded there. As others have already pointed out, it's only recording information about the 3G cell towers that the iDevice sees.
I have a gut feeling that the 24th in Amsterdam was more interesting than the roundabout trip by car, bus, tram, bike, on the 23th in Amsterdam.
A lot of people are saying they don't know why the iDevices are recording as much info and why it is kept for so long. There is an obvious purpose that many seem to have missed: warranty claim checking. It is known that the devices have ways to detect certain warranty voiding events (like having a small piece of litmus paper so they can tell if the device has been significantly exposed to liquid), so why not use this info to. While in most cases it will tell them nothing it could be used to check for obviously false claims. You were at home and it suddenly stopped working you say? Oddly enough your phone's records say you were up a mountain at that time...
Knowing the approximate location history of the phone, particularly during or surrounding in-app purchases could make it possible to affirm or dispute a claim about who bought all those smurfberries. That can help protect the iWhatever user and Apple from some types of fraud attempts. It wouldn't surprise me if something similar is now going on with the mac app store as well.
I was a bit curious when my local news affiliate covered this 'Shocking Discovery.' I downloaded the program myself and, while I didn't tweak the code at all, I found that the fidelity of what it was actually tracking was very hit or miss. Sometimes it would say that I hit about 50 spots in a town I just passed through for a few minutes, and other times it would have no record of me traveling to huge metropolitan areas for hours...
I'm not sure whats supposed to be scary about this. I think that if someone got a hold of this data they could determine where I live down to which half of Texas I live in... I'm not too worried about that.
We all probably know the phone can get the gps location of a cell tower over the cellular network and that the iPhone uses this to get an initial location fix. Or it will only use this cell tower location rather than power up the GPS if you ask the phone(through code) for a rough estimate of location, because sometimes that is all you need. The iPhone is all about power saving so I believe all this is is a local cache of all known cell tower locations.
Think about it for a second. The iPhone talks to a tower, finds out it's location and stores it locally. Next time any application requests a location through Location Services, the phone looks in the cache and instead of using the cellular network(which will use battery power), they read it from the cache.
Much of the data is bogus. I looked at my iPad and it's got data points where I know the device has never been. Furthermore, it's missing a ton of data for where I know it has been. Finally, the dates are all wrong. IMHO, this would never hold up in court.
are the retards who bought Apple products.
Wake up...
Google tracks you as well.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
And future phones will be doing the same stuff.
It's all benign, yet in the right hands of a government and/or criminal entity trampling over your so called "rights".
That's because around here, nuclear power and Apple are two things that everyone has pretty much already made up their minds on (hence, the "fanboy" effect). Therefore, any article that comes up here on those topics is pretty much either people fellating the author/submitter, or going through whatever contortions they think are necessary to try and dismiss the article as bullshit.
Other similar topics include (but are not limited to): HTML5, global warming, vi vs emacs, and whether or not the second Matrix movie was any good.
Looks like I found people, including mods, who don't know a joke post if it ran them over like a bus. Oh well.
Thanks to seeing this on the news, I've written an AppleScript called iPhone Geotag. It uses the location data to tag Places for your pictures in iPhoto. Brings a happy ending to this scandal, eh? Check it out on: http://goo.gl/OQzfB
Easier: put your cell phone in a silvered mylar envelope like the ones they use to ship memory chips. Leave it there a few days and then take it out and try to use it. You'll wait a while before the signal bars come up.