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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."
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? 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.
From the Apple FAQ http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html:
8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.
To produce a traffic database, the location of the phones must be read and transmitted to Apple. Claims that they only send location data and never pull it is clearly false. Of course, the database file on the phone was not the actual problem. It was sloppy to back it up, but it was more a tell tale sign Apples actual bad behavior. The bad behavior was in reading peoples location from their phone when they were told not to.
Google has allowed you to actually turn off tracking by Google. It is part of the setup procedure in every Android phone. They don't even stop you from using location services if you tell them not to collection our location data. If someone shows that Google reading that data when they have been told not to, I will agree that they have behaved badly.
At this point though Apple hasn't come out and said that they will stop secretly tracking iPhones. They have been specifically vauge about what they collect, but leave enough wiggle room so that they can claim they told you. As it stands, they claim that they are reading your location info. They worded it in a way that most people don't realize they are having their location info transmitted to Apple.
That is sketchy at best. The big question is, are they still reading location data when location services are turned off, or are they just hiding the fact that they are tracking you? Based on what they have said, and just as importantly, what they have not said, it sounds like they are still secretly tracking users.
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.
what iOS does after this update is what Android has done all along.
1. location updates only stored temporarily.
2. location updates not stored at all when 'location services' disabled (MENU > Location and Security > Use Wireless Networks)
The other difference is that Google has been upfront about what they do with location data. They said all along that they use this data and that it is anonymized.
Apple seem to have come clean now so its all good.
No reason to hate either side now...unless you want to hate both, because they're both much the same.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
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.