Since the iOS4 update last June, iPhones track everywhere you go and store it in an easy-to-hack-or-subpoena format. It is practically invisible to most users and you can’t disable it or get rid of the data. Why? Apple won’t say.
Whatevs. Me and my $15 cell phone will live happily on stale twinkies and soup cans with torn-off labels for years after your idevices calmly direct the rest of you to check out a nearby ‘reprocessing center’ for AWESOME EXCLUSIVE DEALS on the iPad3.
***Update***
Via commenter Joel, here is a more clear explanation of the problem from the people who discovered it.
What’s so bad about this?
The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine. Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it.
The more fundamental problem is that Apple are collecting this information at all. Cell-phone providers collect similar data almost inevitably as part of their operations, but it’s kept behind their firewall. It normally requires a court order to gain access to it, whereas this is available to anyone who can get their hands on your phone or computer.
By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements.
castellan
Your tin foil hat is getting a little tight….
Joe Beese
Rockwell!
As one wag put it, Apple wants to know where its customers are at all times… so it can reward them.
kdaug
If you have a cell phone, or GPS system in your car, you can be tracked, period. It’s been that way for more than a decade.
Difference is that it used to be that only courts and law-enforcement had access to the data.
Now corporate overlords get to see it, too.
Comrade Dread
The Invisible Hand simply wishes to know where you are at all times in order to give you great discounts on shopping at your favorite stores, and would never abuse this information at all, say, to tell a process server or the company lawyers where to find you.
They can be completely trusted with your privacy.
Warren Terra
Soylent Green is lovely.
Chyron HR
This must be Microsoft’s fault somehow.
MikeJ
@kdaug: Having a GPS system doesn’t make you trackable. They receive, but don’t send. Many(most?) record tracks, but most(all?) of those that record tracks allow you to erase them or even turn off tracks.
Joe Beese
Apple recording everywhere I take their phone bothers me less than the NSA recording every call I make from it*.
* To keep us safe from Terrorists, of course.
Martin
I don’t understand the outrage. It’s storing the data on the phone so it’s being abused how? And is nobody aware that the billing records also include which cell tower picked up the call, so every cell phone user is similarly tracked by the mobile company, even on throw-away phones? They can produce the exact same map, and that’s on their servers, not on your phone.
Next thing you know, someone will discover that there’s a big book that lists everyone’s address and phone number, sorted alphabetically by last name. What happens when that information gets out?
Elizabelle
OT and a bummer:
Tim Hetherington, director of Restrepo, killed in Libya by a rocket-propelled grenade.
2 other photogs gravely wounded; one perhaps killed too.
RIP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/africa/21photographers.html?hp
The Moar You Know
Christ almighty. All cell phones – at least the ones with E911, which has been mandated in all phones since 2005 – do this.
The only difference is that the data is not kept on the phone, but kept by your provider, who will give the information to anyone who can get a subpoena. And anybody, and I do mean pretty much anyone who has even a tangential relationship with law enforcement, can get such a subpoena, no questions asked.
Does this make Apple MORE evil? I’m thinking not, but what the fuck would I know, I just do computer forensics for a living.
Dr. Drang
Martin @8: It’s also storing the information on your computer in an unencrypted backup file.
People who are worried about this should click the option in iTunes to encrypt their backup file.
catclub
@Martin: “I don’t understand the outrage.”
I own the device. Why can I not control what it does?
Yes, the maker simply says take it or leave it. I do not also have to LIKE it. Hence the outrage.
MikeJ
@Martin:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3458.asp
We know that the government of Michigan would never abuse their power.
Linnaeus
Can I just say that the Rockwell reference in the post’s title is awesome? Thank you.
Warren Terra
I don’t have a convenient link, but I read someplace a simply gobsmackingly large number for requests made to – and filled by – cellphone service providers for location data on cell phones, often made without warrants.
I think it’s bad practice for Apple to store this data without telling users, and worse practice to do so without recourse. But then, I expect bad practice from Apple; it’s what they do, good consumer product design combined with abusive practice is essentially their business model. But as Martin points out, the fact that your phone contains a lot of your personal data is not a revelation, and it’s not terribly clear that this instance is worse than the rest.
The bigger public-policy concern is cell phone location data that the service providers possess with or without the phone storing GPS data (indeed, data that they possess even for cheaper phones that lack GPS, albeit to a lower resolution), and which data the service providers are awfully free with.
joshers
This is silly. All cellphones’ gps locations are tracked.
kdaug
@MikeJ: Bzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing.
You got one of those emergency buttons on your GPS? You know, the one you hit if you’re in an accident, automatically calls 911 and tells them your location? That’s called a “transmit”. And your GPS can be remotely called to invoke a transmit.
Been that way since day one. If you have GPS, you can be tracked.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Privacy is a relative concept subject to cultural change, specifically our ongoing transition to a post-literary culture (e.g. see Sven Birkerts’ The Gutenberg Elegies). By the time the Orwellian Horrors arrive, nobody will notice how horrible they are but the old farts who still remember how it was back in the day when you went off somewhere to be alone so you could read a book rather than being plugged into a high-density social network 24×7, which replaced the quiet place in your head with a babel of voices that never stops.
File it under: How I learned to stop worrying and love the databomb.
The Raven
@Warren Terra:
Just so.
Warren Terra
@MikeJ:
OK, this is genuinely scary. If I’m arrested or detained (and I’m a boring white guy who’s never experienced either circumstance), I expect the police to search me for weapons, and without a search warrant – it’s a matter of public safety, and especially of their safety and my safety. I sort-of expect them to search me for drugs, in this day and age, though I’d question whether this is appropriate if I wasn’t detained in connection with drugs. But the idea that because I’m carrying my laptop or my smartphone they’d claim the right to go trawling through the digital records of my existence is really quite worrisome.
MikeJ
@kdaug: No, I don’t have one of those emergency buttons on my gps. No, if I’m in an accident my gps doesn’t call 911.
MattR
@Martin: If I understand right, it is also tracking where you are when you are not making calls.
Irony Abounds
@Martin:
It’s not just information concerning where you made calls – it tracks your movements whether or not you make a call. It does this through the cell towers, not gps, so you can’t defeat it by turning off gps. I suppose you can turn your phone off all the time, but then why have a phone.
singfoom
Meh. Just grab an original iPhone, unlock it and port it to T-Mobile and you’re golden. The original iPhone didn’t support the iOS 4 update, so no tracking.
p.a.
can twinkies go stale? I’m doubtful.
cleek
@catclub:
because, it’s a near certainty that you’ve signed one or more contracts that say you can’t.
Jay in Oregon
@singfoom:
So I take it that you’re unaware that AT&T is in the process of buying T-Mobile?
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/20/atandt-agrees-to-buy-t-mobile-from-deutsche-telekom/
All in the name of increasing competition and benefitting customers, I’m sure…
Jay Schiavone
AWESOME EXCLUSIVE DEALS on the iPad3.
Where? Where, dammit!
The Moar You Know
@MikeJ: Here, let me help you and the Michigan ACLU out, as you are both apparently too lazy to use Google.
Cellebrite.
Now you know what they use, what they can collect, and how they do it. Might want to give the Michigan ACLU a heads-up when you find the time.
singfoom
@Jay in Oregon: That I am aware of. It’ll take them some time, and by that time I will have migrated to another network, with a jailbroken iPhone if possible.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll end up buying a newer model on a another network. And when I’m paranoid about being tracked, I’ll build a faraday cage pouch and put my phone in it.
SCIENCE!
Martin
@Dr. Drang: Yes, that’s very good advise.
Joel
@The Moar You Know: The Apple information can be accessed without subpoena. It’s poorly protected. That’s the problem; the post’s link is helpful in that regard.
Loneoak
@kdaug:
I could be wrong here, but I’m fairly certain that what you mean is: if you a PHONE enabled with GPS and with some mandated operating system features, then you can be/are being tracked. GPS technologies are not inherently trackable, quite the opposite. GPS works by reading signals sent constantly from satellites in synchronous orbit and triangulating those signals to determine your place on the globe. Your phone does not communicate back to the satellites, it communicates the satellite data across the phone/data network. If you had a GPS-enabled device that did not communicate on a data network, you are not trackable, at least not until someone physically takes that device.
A little nitpicky, and you may already understand this, but others don’t.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Thanks for the reminder! I have to call my stock broker and tell him to buy more shares in Reynolds.
kdaug
@Irony Abounds:
No. You have to pull the battery.
Look, this isn’t complicated. Cell phones have to have a signal to a tower in order to work. Some towers are closer – stronger signal. Some towers further away – weaker signal. Triangulate between the towers – there you are!
The Moar You Know
@Irony Abounds: That won’t work either. You have to yank the battery, which I’m not sure you can do with an iPhone.
@catclub: You absolutely own the device. You don’t own the software. If you don’t like that, I suggest that you write your own software to replace the code that has the function that you find offensive.
Martin
@MattR: So is the phone company. How do you think someone can call your cell phone if the towers aren’t recording which one has your phone in range? The phone company also keeps that data to monitor traffic across their networks to see where they need to upgrade equipment or expand service.
If you think this information hasn’t been tracked for every cell user for the last 20 years, you’re crazy. Again, how is having that data stored on your phone a problem? It’s still your data.
stuckinred
Shit, since my days moving da kine I have assumed the heat was looking back through the tv. Fuck it.
sixers
Are we trying to imply that cell phones couldnt basically track your location before apple’s did? Take the manfactured outrage to the local nursing home where you’ll find people who understand technology on the same level as you do.
kdaug
@Loneoak: No, and I’ll refer you back to Moar’s post at #10: If you have a cell phone or GPS system that was made after 2004, FEDERAL LAW requires that it has E911 technology that lets law enforcement ping your phone or GPS to get your location. Period. Full stop.
Probably some Patriot Act/24/post-911 hysteria, but that’s the damned law. If you can connect to WiFi, GPS, or a cell tower, you can be found.
MikeJ
@The Moar You Know: Oftentimes when the ACLU asks for info about a system they know the capabilities beforehand. Sometimes asking the question out loud and getting the the people responding to to answer about the capabilities and what plans they have for those capabilities is more important than the actual answer.
j low
I is not aware of all your internet traditions. Could someone clue me in on the “Rockwell!” reference?
Villago Delenda Est
The solution to all this is very simple.
Is Apple a corporation?
Yes.
Then it is, by its very nature, an extension of the state.
The 4th Amendment applies.
MattR
@Martin: I want to differentiate here between monitoring/accessing the info and storing/tracking it. Maybe I am naive, but while I knew that Verizon might know where I was at any point in time and they might use info about network traffic to make their systems more efficient, I had no idea that Verizon was storing a detailed record of every place my phone has been.
I can’t say for certain that the fact that it is being stored on your phone (and being transferred to your computer) makes it more likely to be hacked than the centralized (and theoretically more secure) phone company data center, but I would venture to bet that if someone steals that info from your phone or PC they are more likely to use it against you and will probably do more harm than someone who steals the data of thousands of people from a centralized location. Imagine somebody stealing your iPhone and being able to quickly use that to figure out your entire daily routine, possibly before you even realized it was stolen. (EDIT: Or how soon before someone finds a way to fool your iPhone into thinking it is connected to your PC so they can get the data wirelessly as they walk next to you on the street?)
@j low: Rockwell
catclub
@singfoom: But will the faraday cage match your tinfoil helmet? ;)
Remember the duct-tape wallet? You laughed then.
Warren Terra
@kdaug:
I don’t like the way that Apple has decided, for aesthetic reasons, not to make batteries removable and swappable. I think it’s bad consumer product design. But – although it is far more common to put the interface to sleep while leaving the device powered on – it is possible by holding a couple of buttons to turn an iPhone or iPod off, such that when it turns on again it must reboot. I doubt its GPS is running, let alone recording data, during that time.
__
__
__
More generally, to everyone saying this is just like the way that cell phone service providers know where every phone (smart or not) is, anyway: the issue you thereby raise is genuine, and probably scarier – but it is different. If the police pull you over, they can, thanks to your iPhone, know everyplace you’ve been for the last month, and when. I’m not sure how much retrospective data is stored by the cellphone service providers, and in any case by asking them the police generate records of their inquiries. The cellphone service providers’ cheerful willingness to share these data is a problem, as I commented upthread – but separately and somewhat differently, the fact that everyone with a modern iPhone is carrying an easily accessible log of their movements is also a problem. The issues are related, and so far I’m more worried about the cellphone service providers’ behavior, but the issues aren’t identical and the one that inspired this thread isn’t negligible.
Martin
@kdaug: Actually, it’s simpler than that. You could always be found because again, in order for the cell phone to work, it needs to constantly talk to the towers. The 2004 law said “Wait, why the fuck do emergency personnel have to go through the phone company to locate someone calling 911? Obviously they want us to find them, that’s why they called 911. Why not just have that information made available directly to dispatch?” That’s most of what that law does. It then adds a requirement that the phone be able to more accurately triangulate its location because a tower can cover a large enough area that just knowing the tower isn’t always enough info. Basically if you’re going to do it, do it right.
Turbulence
@kdaug: @Loneoak: No, and I’ll refer you back to Moar’s post at #10: If you have a cell phone or GPS system that was made after 2004, FEDERAL LAW requires that it has E911 technology that lets law enforcement ping your phone or GPS to get your location. Period. Full stop.
Bullshit. That is true of cell phones that have GPS chips, but is not true for dedicated GPS devices like the Garmin units. Those devices don’t have any ability to send signals back to anyone, including the Feds. They don’t have the antenna needed to transmit messages and they’re not even licensed for data transmission.
No. You have to pull the battery.
Also Bullshit. If you physically turn off the device (as opposed to telling it to sleep), there is no power running through its circuitry. That’s why it takes so long to start up after you turn it off. That’s why airlines tell you to turn off your cell phones during takeoff: if devices that were switched off were transmitting, then that would be a problem.
Tonal Crow
I still don’t have a cellphone, largely because of involuntary tracking. Government has no legitimate interest in where I go.
Joel
Since the post doesn’t present the issue clearly and a lot of people are getting distracted, here’s what you would find if you follow the links to the iPhoneTracker:
stuckinred
@Tonal Crow: That, sports fans, is the answer. If you don’t like it don’t have one.
kdaug
@Loneoak:
Nooo (said with impatient inflection). You GPS sends a signal to the satellite, which then returns your coordinates to you. Catch that first part? Sends a signal. It’s the return that LEO can pick up, by law.
Hell, GPS was a DARPA project in the first place. You act like you’ve never seen one of those movies where the scientist is amazed that being funded by the Pentagon meant that his research was going to be used for weapons.
Tonal Crow
@Villago Delenda Est:
I like where this is going.
Tim F.
Everywhere you go since last June. The trick is that everywhere you go gets stored whether or not you make a call, and it gets stored on your computer in an extremely vulnerable file. This seems unusual both in the degree of surveillance (that is, everywhere you go from June 2010 onwards) and in the carelessness of data handling.
Turbulence
@kdaug: You GPS sends a signal to the satellite, which then returns your coordinates to you. Catch that first part? Sends a signal. It’s the return that LEO can pick up, by law.
No, this is wrong. Very very wrong. That’s not how GPS works. Read the damn wikipedia page. GPS satellites send signals to GPS receivers on the ground, but those devices DO NOT SEND SIGNALS back to the satellites.
Judas Escargot
Not sure why anyone’s surprised at this. Even before GPS, you could triangulate nearby cellphone towers to get some degree of localization.
Don’t know if the other carriers do this, but Sprint lets you track cellphone locations for their “family plan” for $5/month. We use it sometimes to make sure my stepdaughter is where she says she is (“Trust, but verify” as the saying goes).
MattR
@Judas Escargot:
Just me on my plan so I have no clue. Does that mean track – like see all her movements for the past month? Or track – like see where she is at the moment?
stuckinred
Tonal Crow
@stuckinred:
We shouldn’t have to boycott useful technology to dodge illegitimate surveillance. Government has eviscerated the 4th Amendment, and its corporate lackeys — via shrinkwrap contracts of adhesion — are consuming much of the remainder of our privacy. We’ve gotta roll it back. Way back.
Warren Terra
@kdaug:
Nooo (said with saintlike patience), your information is incorrect. Your handheld GPS is purely a receiver; it isn’t sending anything to anyone, least of all sending a message into orbit. The GPS satellites know exactly where they themselves are, and know what time it is, and they announce this to the world. By determining how long it took the message to arrive from several satellites, your receiver knows how far away they are, and thus its physical location. I suppose you could create a system that worked in reverse- the satellites confer about the distance from each of them to each handset, determine its position, and inform it – but it would add layers of complexity and be completely unnecessary. In any case, it’s not what’s happening.
Loneoak
@kdaug:
Are you intentionally misreading my post? You’re wrong. If you have a GPS-enabled device that can connect to data networks, you can be found, I entirely agree and agreed with you above. But ‘GPS’ is not the same thing as a ‘GPS-enabled device with a network connection’. There are GPS devices that connect to nothing and just spit out a location. It’s clear you don’t understand how the technology works.
Do you think your phone or other GPS-enabled networked device communicates with the satellites on which GPS technology is based?
EDIT: Actually, with the invocation of DARPA, are we dealing with tinfoil hat territory here? Do you understand the technology, but think there is some extra thing going on that the government monitors through your fillings?
stuckinred
@Tonal Crow: How else besides a boycott? Blogwhine?
kdaug
@Turbulence: You are right. I was wrong.
Kirk Spencer
@kdaug: No. Your GPS device does not send a signal, at all.
Each GPS satellite constantly broadcasts a signal. Your GPS unit detects each and triangulates off the signals. Pure receiving and processing, zero broadcast.
[edited to add – beaten to the punch, and I see it’s already acknowledged. I’ve got to get faster on the keyboards, i guess.]
Martin
@MattR: Every mobile device has a unique identifier called a MIN. It’s like a MAC address for ethernet/wireless. The mobile company wants to know how many unique devices are connected to each tower, how long they remain connected, what services they use, etc. that in addition to billing purposes, they certainly are tracking that MIN every time it pings a tower. That MIN can then be reconciled to your account, your phone number, and you.
Do they ever do that and say ‘Hey Matt just drove by the office!’? Almost certainly not, but they could do it.
The difference between having your information centralized or local is that if it’s compromised when local, you’re vastly more likely to know about it. If someone steals your phone, you’ll know. If someone steals Verizon’s database, well…
As for someone fooling your phone into thinking it’s connected to a PC, that’s why Apple hasn’t gone to wireless syncing. You MUST be physically connected to the computer. Short of someone slipping a dock connector cable into your pocket without your knowledge, that’s currently not possible. That’s almost certain to change somewhere in the future, but my guess is that it’ll be structured in such a way that what you describe is relatively difficult, such as requiring typing in your password every time you sync or only allowing wireless sync to specific MAC addresses, etc.
Turbulence
@kdaug: Damnit kdaug, that’s not how this works! You’re supposed to dig in your heels and become more obstinate while I berate you…and now you’ve ruined what could have been a fun afternoon with your ‘dignity’ and ‘willingness to apologize’. You suck.
Tonal Crow
@stuckinred:
Dunno. So far most of what privacy advocates (e.g., ACLU, EFF) have tried have been rearguard actions that have merely slowed the erosion. Making progress depends upon enough people caring enough about privacy. If we’ve got that, then it’s Tahrir Square time.
singfoom
@catclub: I have several different tin foil hats, so I’m sure I can find something that gels well with it.
Also, I see your duct tape wallet and raise you a Faraday Cage Wallet that I myself am rocking right now.
Rampant Nerdery AND Paranoia Rolled Into One!
MattR
@Martin:
But how long are they keeping this info for? Can they tell you every MIN that was attached to tower X on August 15, 2010?
kdaug
This is what I was thinking of.
Martin
@Warren Terra:
Get used to it. The volume of structural elements needed to support a replaceable battery is generally not worth the cost. By eliminating all of that crap, they can stuff in a battery that’s 50% larger, eliminating 90% of the reason people need to swap batteries. That’s especially true now that the malleable batteries are quite good – they can just cram battery into every nook and cranny of the device.
Dan
Read Stephen king’s Cell.
Martin
@MattR: I wouldn’t assume that they purge that information. Once something goes into a database it almost always stays in a database. Storage is so cheap, it’s less expensive to just buy more than it is to write the code to properly deprecate the data.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think these guys are doing anything nefarious with it, nor do I think the data is actually structured in a way to do anything nefarious with it, but then neither is the file in your iPhone.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Martin:
Martin, do you work for Apple, or do you just own a lot of stock? I swear, you’ve never said a bad thing about them here.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Martin: I found this irritating too. But I am charging my 06 ipod that I have used practically every day since I bought it. C. 7300 hrs. It hasn’t lost any of its battery life. Pretty amazing.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattR:
Data storage is cheap.
It might take a while to dig it up, but all this sort of thing could very easily, and inexpensively, be archived somewhere.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tonal Crow:
The challenge, of course, is to un-eviscerate the 4th Amendment, and make it apply to ANYTHING touched by government, at any level. Corporations are not private by their very nature…if you want the protection of the state for your business activities, there is a price.
Judas Escargot
@MattR:
Where she is at the moment (within the accuracy of the phone’s GPS– ie “corner of Elm and Main” give or take a few meters). So if you say you’re at so-and-so’s house, or at the mall, you’d best be there if/when checked.
When indoors, the GPS doesn’t get as good a fix, in which case you find out which cellphone tower the phone is talking to at the moment (0.5 – 1 miles).
BTW she’s aware how this works, so ironically we don’t really need to use the feature all that much.
catclub
@MattR: “But how long are they keeping this info for? ”
Forever. What did you think was in those terabyte data archives that abeing built?
Except the ones who have been through discovery regarding emails. _Those_ guys now know to do monthly purges.
[email protected] “Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think these guys are doing anything nefarious with it.” Now AT&T allowing the NSA to build their own data-cable monitoring room in the internet hub building was completely on the up and up. That is why they are so happy to talk about it.
maus
@castellan:
You’re failing to mention why this is necessary. It’s not. The government can already find this information out. I don’t want anyone having me tracked for no good reason, and your lazy acceptance means jack shit to me.
maus
@joshers:
This is a sign that you haven’t actually read what people are comlpaining about.
catclub
@Judas Escargot: Why does this immediately suggest that kids will learn to trade phones when eluding parental surveillance. (And probably figure out how to patch their speech through the tracked phone if you actually call them.)
I hope the tradeoff is made explicit: i.e “I am paying the bill on this phone, so you have to accept surveillance.”
I do not know which I would have chosen as a kid. The toy or the freedom.
someguy
The Mac Cult won’t admit to this but once Apple collects them, they are just business records that the FBI can access during an investigation by showing an administrative subpoena or a national security letter.
I know, I know. “But Steve Jobs would never hurt us.” I’m sure it’s true – unless you’re an app developer or in possession of an iPhone that some beta tester dropped. But Jobs is dying, and he’s not the whole company.
Ah, fuck it. Who cares. The government would never use legal technicalities to engage in domestic intelligence collection. Right? Right?
Peter J
@Martin:
The most obvious way this security fuckup by Apple will be misused is by people wanting to track someone close to them. And as long as that person backs up his or her phone, then he or she will not know one iota about it.
James K Polk, Esq.
@Judas Escargot: I think you mean, she leaves her cell phone at her friend’s house while she goes out and parties…
Billy K
Soooo, let me see if I’ve got this…
AT&T tracks your location, but keeps data behind firewall. This is OK.
Apple tracks your location, but keeps data on YOUR OWN COMPUTER AND PHONE. This is an outrage.
OK. Makes perfect sense. Especially because we know AT&T would never cooperate in a shady government eavesdropping or spying program on US Citizens.
mclaren
Simple solution: use a pay phone.
I ride a bike and have no cellphone.
The rest of you bozos will wind up in a camp getting turned into lampshades while I’m still biking around.
AnnaN
I don’t see how this helps anyone in marketing. Maybe someone at Apple is planning to write a paper on the migration habits of iPhone 4 users?
On a personal scale, I don’t care. I simply assume that nothing I do in my life is private, whether it’s farting in bed or copping a feel of my husband while standing at the checkout line in Whole Foods. And as such I don’t alter my behavior and let it all hang out; a female Homer Simpson if you will.
On a more broad/ethical scale, I am appalled as the only entity which would benefit from this knowledge is the fucking government. Along with everything else going on in my life right now, the only hope I can muster is that I die before the oceans do.
shortstop
@maus: It’s amazing how many people in this thread haven’t.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Billy K:
No, it’s not.
But it’s a known issue. It’s a fight that people like the EFF are already engaged in. It’s a risk that we balance against the power of an iPhone.
This is a new risk. Moreover, it’s one where any half-assed coder can toss through your location data and history. That’s a quantum leap in terms of privacy violation from the aforementioned firewall.
I really wish people who stop acting all holier than thou and “oh, it’s all out there anyway”. It’s not, and as crappy as the gov’t access is, this is many, many times worse.
scav
You don’t see how it helps marketing? Does the word spam mean anything to you, only it’s now coming to you over your phone, from stores that you are walking near and from companies that know your purchasing habits from Amazon and Citibank as well as all credit rating. You may or may not be comfortable with it, but the marketing implications are easy beasy.
Nutella
@mclaren:
There are payphones? I haven’t seen one in years outside of the train and bus stations.
DZ
This is one of the hundred reasons that I hate Apple and will not use a Mac
Brachiator
So, let’s see. The iPhone has a feature that let’s you track it and find it if it is stolen. It has a feature that let’s you see the whereabouts of your kid (or spouse). And the sloppily made the history easily accessible.
Yeah, it’s bad. And easily resolvable. On the other hand, a lot of folks seem willing to give their Corporate overlords access to everything they see, do, “like” or “friend” and everything that their friends and relatives do, see, or think.
Make up your minds, people. You can’t have it both ways.
BD of MN
Just yesterday I saw a guy driving a 2009 Mustang on a payphone. My first thought? He’s having an affair…
Judas Escargot
@catclub:
That is almost exactly how the conversation went, actually. And once you’re an adult, your whereabouts become your own business.
As for leaving her phone elsewhere (or just turning it off, which obviously breaks this feature), her mother’s been known to call at random times for exactly this reason. (Better pick up!)
dollared
Add this to the list of things that Apple is learning as they take over the world. At Microsoft they would have seventeen privacy experts looking over your product plan and stopping you. Apple, not so much. But it’s more likely incompetence rather than evil -they are not used to having a mono poly over an essential service.
So they can stop it and they should.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh the nostalgia! What a charming an antiquated concept. I loved that Amendment prior to its gutting. I still miss it.
JD_PhD
I don’t find this completely harmless, but if anyone has access to your computer to read this file, having them read this file is the last thing you have to worry about.
johnnymags
Our very own RFID chip.
Joel
@Brachiator: I don’t see the contradiction. Facebook is essentially voluntary sharing of information, and they get rightly dinged when they try to coerce information out of users involuntarily. The iPhone thing is a vulnerability. And don’t think there aren’t people working at exploiting that vulnerability right now. Apple’s not going to fix it until people complain about it.