My news sites are heating up about the discovery of a database created by iOS on iPhones that track everywhere you go. While no malicious intent has been uncovered (the information doesn’t seem to go anywhere), one has to wonder why Apple added it and what the ultimate purpose could be. Also, I’m curious as to why Apple never disclosed this to their users.
Using an application called iPhoneTracker, the data can be extracted and displayed. I’ve been pretty busy, it looks like.
Note: I love that the developers of the app also tell you how to access the data directly, for the truly paranoid.
While I love my iPhone, I am pretty certain that it is the last Apple phone I will own. I just can no longer ignore the privacy issues, and although I am far short of abstaining from carrying a phone altogether, and am becoming much more of a freetard than I’ve been in the past.
Any idea if there’s a non-OSX edition of either this app or a similar one?
Not that I know of, but it’s hosted on github so you should be able to get the code. I think it uses a python script to parse the data.
I’m really surprised. And indeed, no iPhone anymore. But are the others better? I’d love to have a phone on which I really can see everything..
Looking at my data, it doesn’t appear to be where I’ve been, but rather the cell phone towers that my phone has accessed. That makes a bit more sense, since I can see more legitimate applications for that data, however, I still don’t think it needs to be stored on the phone, especially for so long. I wonder if this is just a case of lazy programming.