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iPhone Tracking Ruckus Ongoing
Trailrunner7 writes "A pair of Apple customers has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that Apple is invading their privacy by collecting location data about iPhone and iPad users without their knowledge." and theodp noted that the iPhone tracking 'Bug' is actually patent pending... which makes it harder to buy the mistake argument. As if that's not enough fun, South Korea, Italy, Germany and other countries are all looking into it.
The "mistake argument" isn't claiming that the whole location history implementation is a mistake, it's claiming that it's intended to be a cache, not a permanent archive. Nothing in the patent has anything to do with this.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Everybody take a deep breath. The log does not go to Apple, it stays on the phone. Apple is not tracking anybody, your phone is...but its your phone so where is the problem.
Worst case, maybe they should have encrypted the file.
Big Deal.
Isn't having a cell phone (especially one with apps that can access the GPS location) always track able by someone? Don't get me wrong I don't like the idea of being tracked, but the only way your going to achieve this, is to leave your cell phone at home.
This whole thing is incredibly bizarre. People are complaining that their GPS knows where it's been. Think about that. Next they will be complaining that their phone keeps track of their calls. The horror!
The information doesn't even get sent anywhere. It is collected by the phone for its own use. Sure, when you back the phone up to your computer this gets moved along with everything else. Darn Apple for backing up your phone when you tell it to back up your phone. How thoughtless. You'd think they would at least include an option to encrypt it so that no one could... oh, wait they did. With a single easy-to-use checkbox option.
Seriously, if anyone out there is this paranoid about anyone going through their backups or phones then a smart-phone is probably not the tool for them. If anyone really is going through your backups they have physical access to your computer and phone and your position history is probably the least of your worries. Grow up. Yes, the iPhone (and every other smartphone) keeps more information then phones (or anything else) did twenty years ago. They also do more things than anything did twenty years ago. That's the selling point.
Reading your comment would make one think that location tracking and location history is part of being a "smart" phone. There's nothing in the smartphone that requires this behaviour.
The problem with this data is that
1) A user cannot erase it analogous to clearing cache/cookines on a PC
2) It is purposely hidden from the user
3) Law enforcement in states like Michigan can download this information WITHOUT a warrant
4) Potential for abuse by apps and / or people who will stalk you/spy on you unbeknown to you.
Not to mention, that this is just wrong. There are certain inalienable rights (or at least they are supposed to be there), and a right to privacy is one of them.
Any such system should be opt-in ONLY.
Dude, the fact that apple doesn't collect that information by default at the present time doesn't help _you_ or any other member of the Reality Distortion Field...
(1) Any app at any time including IOS updates has that information at its disposal, so iFarmville now knows where you spend most of your time and when you are not home. So maybe does any active advertisement ware and those free-but-buy-stuff games your kid is playing.
(2) Your phone is PRE-tapped as far as law enforcement is concerned. If I put a GPS anklet on you now "just in case do do something later" would you be fine with that? If I say it also "does iTunes" does it make it retroactively okay?
(3) I can "give you" an app and that app can now tell me how much time you spend shopping and where you shop down to the department of the store (couple meters).
(4) God save you if you get divorced or become subject to any legal fishing exiditions.
Suppose some legal person gets a hard on for the legal pursuit of you. I decide you are a child predator because that helps me get reelected. I take your phone log, makes excerpts of it, and "notice" in front of the Grand Jury and the actual Jury that you spend an awful lot of time near a preschool. Now _you_ never noticed that your coffee stand of choice is right next to some kinder-care place in the same strip mall, or if you did, you didn't care at all. But _there_ _you_ _are_ spending every morning watching the kiddies come and go "according to your phone" and the way someone has chosen to take data and "reimagine" your intent.
Less Obviously: If I took the iPhone you have in your hot little hands, and computed all the time-distance values "near" roads, how often would you "be speeding"... lets just use that to set your car and health insurance rates shall we? Do you have an app from your insurance company on your phone right now? Will you never have such an app? Are you _sure_?
The question isn't who is getting the data by default, its a question of where the data _might_ go and what it says about your past to some creative mind somewhere.
Don't paint me as "all hysterical" though. I have latatude on my Android devices. I know about the _actual_ cache in Android as opposed to the full journal in iPhones. Every day I walk into a number of places where cell phones are forbidden for security reasons. I have been fully briefed about the background cost in lost privacy to having a hot phone in my hands for more than ten years.
IOS _has_ stepped over a very bright line, but we are boiling frogs here, and the Reality Distortion Field is just letting the iFrogs cook faster.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
As many have stated for days now to no avail, the iPhone consolidated.db log does not store and user location data. Even the patent indicates this. To understand this better, consider how both iOS and Android devices estimate user location when GPS is not available. They triangulate based on position relative to cell towers and wi-fi APs, which, in turn, requires the phone to know the location of these reference points. Since towers and APs don't transmit their own coordinates, phones need access to a position database. There are two ways this access can happen. The phone can either access the info over the internet, with all attendant delays, or it can maintain a local database and go off-phone only when there is no hit in this cache. But how can one keep this local database from becoming too large? Limit it to those cell towers that the user has connected with in the past, since those are the ones the user is more likely to be near in the future. This leads to a file on the phone containing location coordinates of towers and APs to which the phone has connected. Not user location data ... reference point data. And not in linear time, but only the most recent encounter with each reference point.
In other words, the consolidated.db file. The Apple patent claims exactly this.