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Apple Officially Addresses Location Data Controversy

fsck-y dingo said:
Improved battery life. :)

I only activate Locations Services when I feel it's needed. Maps, Star Walk and MLB at Bat are about the only ones that come to mind. I don't keep LS turned on all of the time. I switch it on before using one of these. For The Weather Channel and other apps that require a location to function I manually enter it.
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I turned it off in case it might use the data to detect that I live in California then tax my purchases on the App Store accordingly... And yes I think there is tax on purchases.
 
canyonblue737 said:
That's good enough for me.

Apple's only screw up here was keeping the infinite database forever on your phone and backed up to your Mac. Their was no reason to back it up to the computer and no reason to keep the data on the phone after it was passed to Apple (encrypted, de-identified etc.) but I suspect the reason was simply "we weren't doing anything bad with it so we never even considered we should delete it later."
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I guess you missed the part about the data is used in the phone to help the phone determine it's location faster and more precisely when you do want to use location apps (which I do a lot). So if you don't back the data up and you have to restore the phone (happens every time you do an update) then you would take a hit in location performance.
 
For the paranoid people who don't understand the issue and believe everything our media tells us to fear (coughFoxNewscough), here's something amusing for the mindless:

"Meat with eyes"
 
Full of Win said:
Keeping a log of nearby locations I've been around, is by proxy, logging my location. If they keep a record of the towers my phone and iPad have linked to, and the locations of these towers are fixed and known, then Apple is in effect tracking my location in this linking.

I think it was not a bug, nut data waiting to be sent to Apple for profit generating purposes.
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You really need to get a dumb phone............oh wait.....the NSA will still be able to log every conversation, text and yes your location..........

Either get rid of your phone or quit being such a whiner
 
Poo. I really wanted to see my tracking info. Why is it doing this?
Screen shot 2011-04-27 at 9.55.43 AM.png
 
samcraig said:
No they won't. They're not going to delete the DB - they're only storing a week. Did you read the story?
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And assume you go to a place you have been a month ago, wouldn't having the database speed things up when you return to that location a month later?

(Though I agree the effect will be very minor, as soon as you land with a plane, the iPhone will start populating that database, thus having the data from a month ago will only be relevant if you need location data right away after landing.)
 
Full of Win said:
I think it was not a bug, nut data waiting to be sent to Apple for profit generating purposes.
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But if Apple has been using this acquired data, why on earth is it allowing Google and others to eat away at its mobile & tablet marketshare? Why collect data if it isn't relevant to you business.
 
steadysignal said:
correct. wasn't sure how long it would take for people in general to get up in arms about location privacy on the idevices... what did people think was going to happen??

such it is, our electronic tethers are really leashes.
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It's not very accurate information apparently. I would like to know just how accurate this location tracking is before I get too excited.
 
revelated said:
You mean to tell me that Apple, a company that seems to release fairly solid software, "neglected" to test that when disabling an option called LOCATION SERVICES, that it actually disabled location checking properly? Are some of you really so Jobsian?

Call a spade a spade. There's no possible chance this was a mistake. They got caught. They should not be given a pass over it. If a user opts to disable Location Services, they were working under the false impression that their location was no longer being tracked. Seems mighty shifty to me. Doesn't matter how much data might have been user-identifiable. This sounds like something Google would do, not Apple.
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You can think what you want. I develop software for a living. This file is not a "feature", and it isn't and never was present intentionally to store your location data. It is a very, very useful collection of data that in some situations makes your phone work faster and save power. Location Services are disabled when you disable them, and enabled when you enable them. Whoever tested this was testing exactly that: That Location Services does its best to find your location when it is enabled, and that it absolutely refuses to look for your location when it is disabled. That's what enabling/disabling location services means. Nobody at Apple ever cared about this file. It wasn't on anyone's radar before people had their paranoia attack.

This file recorded locations of WiFi and cell towers, but only the last time that you have been at each place. Exactly what is needed to improve Location Services. All your history, which would have been much more useful to track you, is deleted. Your actual location, which is known to your phone, and which would have been much more useful to track you, is deleted. All because it didn't serve the purpose of this file, which isn't and never was to track you.
 
Apple Care?

Intarweb said:
I wonder if this is why I can no longer get more than a days charge on my iPhone 4 with minimal use since it seems like it's an always on thing.
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If you are having battery issues and you have Apple Care on the phone, you can take it to a store and have them replace the battery.
 
Burger King said:
You really need to get a dumb phone............oh wait.....the NSA will still be able to log every conversation, text and yes your location..........

Either get rid of your phone or quit being such a whiner
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Just to be clear - you think someone who wants to question what is and what is not being tracked is a whiner?

Did I read you correctly. Nice name calling.
 
I love the conspiracy theorists of the world...

It's always entertaining reading the paranoid ramblings of conspiracy theorists.
 
manu chao said:
And assume you go to a place you have been a month ago, wouldn't having the database speed things up when you return to that location a month later?

(Though I agree the effect will be very minor, as soon as you land with a plane, the iPhone will start populating that database, thus having the data from a month ago will only be relevant if you need location data right away after landing.)
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I'm not as impatient as some on here. If I have to wait another second or two - I'm good. :)
 
bedifferent said:
There's a nuclear disaster in Japan and treacherous weather throughout, people are jobless and homeless and the dollar's in the sh***er and our Supreme Court ruled that companies can give unlimited financial aid to any politician putting business interests in our government and people are worried about Apple possibly tracking them on their iDevice?

Let 'em, my life is BORING, they wouldn't be interested :p
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one of the best posts I have ever read.
 
Cell phones - in general

The principle of any and every cell phone is that if can connect to a cellular network signal, it knows where you are. Based upon every unique cellular ID, the networks know how to route incoming calls and texts to you, If it didn't how that. how the h#!! do you think you'd get any calls? Right now, sitting at my desk, Verizon knows exactly where I am (based upon triangulation of the nearest cell towers. They have my unique cell ID and my account information. My dumb phone even has a gps 911 locator on it. I dial 911, they know where I am.

Side story: the credit card companies know exactly where I am better then the cell companies. Every time I swipe my credit or debit card, they know where I am. When I travel for vacation, I am very likely to get a call from my credit card company (on my cell) asking where, when and how long I will be traveling. They know every store and every purchase I've ever made on a credit card.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

smaffei said:
A lot of people are upset over this. But, no one seems to care that the US Government can snoop on any electronic communication it wants for well over 10 years now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)

Data transmissions, cell phone calls, you name it. I think we're trying to cook the wrong goose if you ask me.
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Of course, anyone who doesnt like this idea, is a communist who hates America and Freedom.
 
Does anyone have any photoshop skills? If so, do you want to do up some mock 'iPhone location maps'?

E.g. Charlie Sheen's, F1 driver's (lots of little circles around the world), Bin Laden's/Gadaffi's (hiding under a rock somewhere) etc.. etc..

:p
 
igator210 said:
Side story: the credit card companies know exactly where I am better then the cell companies. Every time I swipe my credit or debit card, they know where I am. When I travel for vacation, I am very likely to get a call from my credit card company (on my cell) asking where, when and how long I will be traveling. They know every store and every purchase I've ever made on a credit card.
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Are you somehow trying to imply that because the credit card company knows so much about you that it is OK to keep that information unencrypted on your phone and backup on your computer?

All people are asking for is that personal information is kept encrypted and secured. No more. No less.
 
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