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Apple Releases iOS 4.3.3 To Fix Location Tracking
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has released a software update (iOS 4.3.3) to fix the much-talked-about iPhone Location Tracking bug. Apple faced a lot of criticism over the issue — iPhone and iPad secretly tracks users' locations and saves them in the device's cache as well as in a hidden file which is copied to the PC whenever the computer gets synced with device."
I'm pretty sure it was a feature, not a bug.
Two years is double or four times as long as other phone providers.
A Sony Ericsson phone is effectively abandonware as soon as you buy one. A HTC phone is released every 6-12 months and with such a large number of phones to support you won't see many or any updates after 12 months.
Apple's support for the iPhone is pretty exception in the mobile phone market. So unless you can provide an example of a mobile operator who provided support after two years I think you need to stop whining.
My understanding was that what was being logged was not the users' locations but rather that of the nearest cell tower or hotspot.
Your understanding is flawed. It wasn't logging the nearest cell tower or wifi. It was, based on location, downloading to the phone a list of nearby cell towers and wifi networks (from a crowdsourced database run by Apple) so that when the user used an app that requested the location of the phone, this cache could be used to quickly generate a rough estimate and speed up the GPS location. This is a very useful optimization for most of us and the fact that it allowed people to generate a very rough log of our locations over time was simply an unintended side effect.
Isn't this (the update) an implied admission that the original software tracking was wrong?
Well, wrong in that it kept a large cache instead of a small one. Most users probably care a lot more about rapidly finding their location all the time than they do about the possibility that someone with access to their phone or an unencrypted backup thereof could generate a very rough estimate of their locations over time.
I don't see how it could have been coded in, and have had the behavior described to it, as an accident.
Then you have no idea what the software was doing. Why don't you find out by doing something crazy like reading.
What will become of the data already collected?
Data wasn't collected. It was downloaded TO the phone and cached there. The "collected data" was collected on your phone and stored there as well as in any backups of your phone. What you do with it is up to you if you have an iPhone.
Isn't this (the update) an implied admission that the original software tracking was wrong? I don't see how it could have been coded in, and have had the behavior described to it, as an accident. What will become of the data already collected?
Good grief. Still want this to be an issue?
Design document:
We want to be able to determine location very very quickly. Much faster than GPS.
Developer: ...OK. I'll just keep a cache of visited towers/wifi and their GPS location cached. That'll be super fast!
That's it, folks. The whole thing. non-jailbroken apps can't read the cache, so nobody cares. The cache never gets sent to Apple, so nobody cares. But it turns out that the cache is backed up to the computer, so people freak out. OH NOES!
Design document:
Make people shut up about this file.
Developer: ...Good grief. OK, I won't back up the cache to iTunes. And while I'm in the code, I'll trim the cache size - looks like it was getting big for some people.
That's it. No story.
My understanding was that what was being logged was not the users' locations but rather that of the nearest cell tower or hotspot. But whatever, hurf durf, Steve wuz spying on us.
OK, so you're justifying Apple tracking their users to within a few hundred yards.
What CAN'T you justify, fanboi?
I might be called a fanboi, but they were caching location data in what seemed like a logical manner to speed up location services. Many users, myself included, enjoy speedier access.
Sure, they should have encrypted it by default, but it's not like their users had any expectation that they weren't being tracked. They were surprised by an unencrypted cache of location data, but ATT, Verizon, Sprint, ???, are already readily tracking user locations of all phones on the network. I would think someone silly if they expected the location services apps they are using aren't tracking them as well.
People that get upset and say "OMG! APPLE IS BIG BROTHER!" are the same people who get upset when very private information on facebook is seen by people they didn't realize could see it.
Since it didn't actually track your location, only present a database of known network points around you, you actually couldn't use it to track anything. I had a look at my own data and you couldn't tell where I lived or worked from it, and those are places I go every day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The database is not of the nearest tower or hotspot. It is of many nearby ones, (e.g. within dozens of miles). By having this cache of local known positions, the GPS can resolve in seconds, rather than in minutes.
Look at any analysis of the actual data and you'll see that the points do a very poor job of tracking locations. Some of the points are predictions on where you might go. The point of a cache is to have the data at hand before it's needed, so that when it is needed, it's right there. It's possible he was somewhere near Las Vegas is not tracking.
OK, so Apple's warranty is for only one year. As far as I know, they haven't violated any of the terms of their 25 page contract I never read. As far as I can tell, their support is as good as any cell phone company. (Not a high bar to get over.) So you're justified in calling me a whiner.
Still, after paying more for that phone than I've paid for some computers, I'm pretty unhappy with Apple. I've been using Apple computers continuously (but not exclusively) since 1985. I guess I'm pining for the days when a computer was still pretty useful and still getting updates 5 years after you bought it.
I really don't want to start another 2 year commitment on a smartphone. And the iPad I'm considering looks like less of a bargain if it is going to be made intentionally obsolete in 2 years.
And People still can't stop making shit up! There is one file. (the Cache) its not hidden. It contains locations of cell towers and wi-fi APs. It does not contain the users location. The data for each tower was over written and only logged when towers came into range. As such the data never could be used to "trace some ones every move". The data would only show the general location of the user (being somewhere near a tower). The app that showed the locations sensationalized the whole thing by showing a week or mores worth of data by default putting in many more data points. Many days would actually contain few or no data points at all. And no one has shown this data being sent to Apple.
Yeah clearly that data needs to be synchronised to iTunes
OK, one last time for the cheap seats: Apple syncs everything as part of an iPhone backup. They do this so that when you restore from backup you get the device back to its backed up state (kinda the point), temporary files included. When you actually look at a backup all manner of cache files are included. It is not only a backup of data, it's a backup of device state.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
What about licenses and DRM which tie purchases to device, meaning restoring to a different device you can lose your data. (Don't care if it allos 2, or 3 or 5 devices....bottom line if you have trouble with your phone you can lose more than the worth of the phone).
Are you daft, bro? Do you actually have any idea of what you're talking about or just spewing random hater crap?
I've backed up and restored the same image onto THREE DIFFERENT IPHONES now. Including my upgrade from a 3G to a 4. And can you guess how much data I've lost? Bingo! Not a single app. Not a single song. Not a single video.
Go back under your bridge, troll.