Hm. While I didn't look directly at what was in the database at that point, I modified Peter Warden's tool to let me get a more refined picture of what was going on, both by increasing the precision, and by aggregating the data on a daily basis, as opposed to a weekly one.
That said, I actually got into what gets stored in a representative consolidated.db's "CellLocations" table today, and dumped out raw data to an Excel spreadsheet (which you can also download if you want to play with it yourself). I also mapped each "batch" of locations—since they're time-stamped in a dozen batches ranging from 7 to 43 locations, collected at intervals ranging from 1 minute to over 16 hours, and covering geographical areas from a few blocks up to 80 or 90 miles. You can see all the details at http://caffeine.shugendo.org/2011/04/22/an-even-deeper-dive-into-the-iphone-location-data/
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, kiss my ass.
You've missed the point: look at that map again. There's no way you could tell, with even the slightest degree of reliability, that my phone was "on the train" at all from the location information available.
I haven't thanked you yet.
I last worked for Apple in 2001, and the work that I did was pre-iPhone, pre-iPod, pre-OS X. Since then, I've been publicly, and vocally, critical of a number of things Apple has done, and I was quite skeptical about the iPhone when it was introduced—I presented, for example, at "LUGradio Live" in San Francisco in 2008 on, among other things, why I didn't believe the iPhone had the chance of a snowball in hell against the unstoppable force of community-based open source goodness on mobile devices. Shows how much I knew.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4794227130234037617&hl=en#
So, unless you're supposing some sort of mind control on Apple's part, exerted on decade-old ex-employees, I don't see that any particular "disclaimer", beyond the clear mention on the easily accessible "About" page, is necessary, nor does my discussing the facts that I turned up represent any sort of a "conflict of interest". Frankly, you're making yourself look a little silly by suggesting that it is without knowing the facts of the matter. You'd have done a lot better to stick to something relevant instead.
You're welcome.
I guess the only reasonable response, if one is this concerned, would be to abandon the use of cell phones and computers entirely, not to mention paper and pens (since your partner, her friends, your mates, your kids, your stepkids, your foster kids, their friends, random criminals, etc., etc., etc., might find something you'd written down).
iOS Location Services are "Opt In". You disable them entirely, if you want, by turning off the switch in the settings. Any app which wishes to use Location Services to determine your location on an iPhone has to get your permission to do so first.
"Yet, no matter how good your blog post is, it would have been better journalism to include in the summary link(s) to other source(s) with different perspective(s)."
You mean, like the Wired and Atlantic articles that I linked to at the end of my posting...?
"... one of my buddies might get ad revenue if I link his no-name blog on the main page..."
Given that there aren't any ads on my blog for me to get revenue from, and I don't have any "buddies" who are moderators on slashdot (that I know of), I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.
My point was that if you view the file being backed up to your PC as a "vulnerability", then encrypting it should ease you worries.
While we haven't heard from Apple what the reason for the file is, it seems pretty reasonable to me that it's a database of known cell tower and WiFi locations, to be used to rapidly "triangulate" your location, when possible, if you have an application that wants to use iOS' Location Services. This idea would seem to be supported by the existence of a similar location cache on Android.
The best potential explanation I've come up with is that the phone is caching the location of cell phone towers and WiFi networks you pass by or through, along with their recorded locations, in order to avoid having to use the expensive GPS hardware any more, or longer, than necessary.
I had the phone on the entire time, and that's far from the only anomaly I pointed out there. All of the information presented on this—so far, anyway—has been anecdotal: nobody has access to anybody else's location database from their iPhone.
And, since Android phones do just the same thing, if the guys at Apple "fucked up", the guys at Google did, every bit as badly.
My point here was not to be an "apologist", simply to present some aspects of the data that were getting missed in all the hysterics.
"The one were a medieval monk receives formation about "how-to-use" a book."
Except that one's not a Monty Python sketch. The clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ is from a Norwegian show, "Øystein og jeg".
One company at Palm's developer conference was showing a Cobalt phone on the exhibition floor; another announced that they'd be shipping a Cobalt phone by the end of this year.
A good deal of Cobalt was derived from work originally done for BeOS (actually BeIA)--the IPC/component broker called "Binder", the entire graphics subsystem underpinnings, the multimedia framework--all were based on work originally done at Be.
Palm OS is absolutely "viable." Dave Nagel pointed out in his keynote that the Kyocera 7135, a Palm OS-based "smart phone" which came out about two years ago, has outsold all Microsoft Pocket PC-based smart phones from all manufacturers put together...
In all fairness, palmOne has never claimed, anywhere, in even the slightest way, that Linux was involved in any way, shape or form with this product, so the inference that this was an attempt to somehow inveigle you into looking into the product seems unfair. The use of the word "Linux" in connection with this product seems to have been solely perpetrated by whoever posted the original story here.
PalmSource (separate company, but the supplier of "Palm OS" to palmOne and others) has announced that they are developing a version of Palm OS which uses Linux as a foundation; they will be providing more details at their developer conference next week--see http://www.palmsource.com/events/devcon2005/track_ technical.html...
Slashdot Mirror
Hm. While I didn't look directly at what was in the database at that point, I modified Peter Warden's tool to let me get a more refined picture of what was going on, both by increasing the precision, and by aggregating the data on a daily basis, as opposed to a weekly one.
That said, I actually got into what gets stored in a representative consolidated.db's "CellLocations" table today, and dumped out raw data to an Excel spreadsheet (which you can also download if you want to play with it yourself). I also mapped each "batch" of locations—since they're time-stamped in a dozen batches ranging from 7 to 43 locations, collected at intervals ranging from 1 minute to over 16 hours, and covering geographical areas from a few blocks up to 80 or 90 miles. You can see all the details at http://caffeine.shugendo.org/2011/04/22/an-even-deeper-dive-into-the-iphone-location-data/
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, kiss my ass.
You've missed the point: look at that map again. There's no way you could tell, with even the slightest degree of reliability, that my phone was "on the train" at all from the location information available.
I haven't thanked you yet. I last worked for Apple in 2001, and the work that I did was pre-iPhone, pre-iPod, pre-OS X. Since then, I've been publicly, and vocally, critical of a number of things Apple has done, and I was quite skeptical about the iPhone when it was introduced—I presented, for example, at "LUGradio Live" in San Francisco in 2008 on, among other things, why I didn't believe the iPhone had the chance of a snowball in hell against the unstoppable force of community-based open source goodness on mobile devices. Shows how much I knew. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4794227130234037617&hl=en# So, unless you're supposing some sort of mind control on Apple's part, exerted on decade-old ex-employees, I don't see that any particular "disclaimer", beyond the clear mention on the easily accessible "About" page, is necessary, nor does my discussing the facts that I turned up represent any sort of a "conflict of interest". Frankly, you're making yourself look a little silly by suggesting that it is without knowing the facts of the matter. You'd have done a lot better to stick to something relevant instead. You're welcome.
I guess the only reasonable response, if one is this concerned, would be to abandon the use of cell phones and computers entirely, not to mention paper and pens (since your partner, her friends, your mates, your kids, your stepkids, your foster kids, their friends, random criminals, etc., etc., etc., might find something you'd written down).
iOS Location Services are "Opt In". You disable them entirely, if you want, by turning off the switch in the settings. Any app which wishes to use Location Services to determine your location on an iPhone has to get your permission to do so first.
"Yet, no matter how good your blog post is, it would have been better journalism to include in the summary link(s) to other source(s) with different perspective(s)." You mean, like the Wired and Atlantic articles that I linked to at the end of my posting...?
They do: Location Services is what makes "Where's my iPhone?" possible.
This is excellent information; I don't know why this comment hasn't been modded up.
For the record, if it were Microsoft, my response would be identical: tempest; teapot.
"... one of my buddies might get ad revenue if I link his no-name blog on the main page..." Given that there aren't any ads on my blog for me to get revenue from, and I don't have any "buddies" who are moderators on slashdot (that I know of), I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.
My point was that if you view the file being backed up to your PC as a "vulnerability", then encrypting it should ease you worries. While we haven't heard from Apple what the reason for the file is, it seems pretty reasonable to me that it's a database of known cell tower and WiFi locations, to be used to rapidly "triangulate" your location, when possible, if you have an application that wants to use iOS' Location Services. This idea would seem to be supported by the existence of a similar location cache on Android.
Why not simply set your iPhone backups to be encrypted...?
Yes, it says that pretty clearly, right there on the blog.
There's no evidence that the data is being "migrated" off the phone, "persistently" or otherwise.
The best potential explanation I've come up with is that the phone is caching the location of cell phone towers and WiFi networks you pass by or through, along with their recorded locations, in order to avoid having to use the expensive GPS hardware any more, or longer, than necessary.
I had the phone on the entire time, and that's far from the only anomaly I pointed out there. All of the information presented on this—so far, anyway—has been anecdotal: nobody has access to anybody else's location database from their iPhone. And, since Android phones do just the same thing, if the guys at Apple "fucked up", the guys at Google did, every bit as badly. My point here was not to be an "apologist", simply to present some aspects of the data that were getting missed in all the hysterics.
"The one were a medieval monk receives formation about "how-to-use" a book." Except that one's not a Monty Python sketch. The clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ is from a Norwegian show, "Øystein og jeg".
One company at Palm's developer conference was showing a Cobalt phone on the exhibition floor; another announced that they'd be shipping a Cobalt phone by the end of this year.
Are you unaware of the Eclipse-based Palm OS Development System...?
A good deal of Cobalt was derived from work originally done for BeOS (actually BeIA)--the IPC/component broker called "Binder", the entire graphics subsystem underpinnings, the multimedia framework--all were based on work originally done at Be.
Palm OS is absolutely "viable." Dave Nagel pointed out in his keynote that the Kyocera 7135, a Palm OS-based "smart phone" which came out about two years ago, has outsold all Microsoft Pocket PC-based smart phones from all manufacturers put together...
In all fairness, palmOne has never claimed, anywhere, in even the slightest way, that Linux was involved in any way, shape or form with this product, so the inference that this was an attempt to somehow inveigle you into looking into the product seems unfair. The use of the word "Linux" in connection with this product seems to have been solely perpetrated by whoever posted the original story here.
_ technical.html...
PalmSource (separate company, but the supplier of "Palm OS" to palmOne and others) has announced that they are developing a version of Palm OS which uses Linux as a foundation; they will be providing more details at their developer conference next week--see http://www.palmsource.com/events/devcon2005/track