A little concerned, a few questions about ios 4's tracking?

[darngooddesign]

I'm not concerned at all about the location tracking. As recent reports have come to show, the location tracking information is not sent back to Apple or to anyone. It just resides on the i-Device. The only potential issue here is that the file is not encrypted either on your i-Device or on the computer that it syncs with. That means someone with technical know-how can use your tracking location information but only if they have physical access to your i-Device or computer that the i-Device syncs to.

Methinks that the media has yet again heightened the issue to levels that are unwarranted.

Yes, Apple can fix this and probably should but it is not such a big issue as a data leak or like the recent SSL breaks.

Police have the right to do a data dump of your cellphone at traffic stops. So it's actually quite easy for someone to get that data.

 

[boshii]

I heard Osama bin Laden ditched his iPhone after he found out it was tracking him.

 

[benhollberg]

I bet this will be fixed in the next minor OS update.

I thought I heard a report from somewhere that they said this was actual a bug. It is suppose to track you but not keep the information for as long as it does.

 

[mcdj]

People, relax. This is just preliminary Skynet groundwork. Phase one is only proof of concept. You don't have to worry about fetal tracking implants until President Google takes office.

 

[Night Spring]

From why I've heard, consolidated.db exists in the user partition as of iOS 4.0 and not the system partition. This means that an 'Erase all content & settings" wipe would be enough to remove it. Regardless, if you're still concerned, hit the Restore button in iTunes and it will wipe the system partition as well. IMO it's really not worth worrying any more about it.

"Erase all content & settings" and hitting "Restore" in iTunes (and setting up as new, not restore from backup) basically do the same thing. That is, they erase everything on the iDevice and set it back to the way it was when it left the factory. So it doesn't matter where consolidated.db is located, doing either of these actions will clear it from the device.