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Federal Lawsuit Filed Over Apple's Location Tracking in iOS [Updated]

kiljoy616 said:
Strange Google is not on the lawsuit since they do the same. I guess its Apple turn to deal with privacy.
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Apple will just break the law like Google. It's fine, they aren't doing any harm (Apple or Google). Apple doesn't look through this data and say, "ooh, Bob Smith was at this place!" In addition, don't you have the option to disable location services? :confused:

I can see this collection thing as a basis for some great features.
 
Plymouthbreezer said:
It's just a little creepy.

I'm kinda siding with users on this one. Apple has no need to save this info, regardless of how vague it might be. I don't know.
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Yeah they do. Imagine the apps you can make with this info! I'd definately enable it. In fact, you already did when you left "location services" on.
 
inkswamp said:
I was a little alarmed by the stories about this tracking database until I ran the program itself and saw the results. It's just showing the towers you've connected to. I've seen and heard many people assume that it's actually tracking exact movements and locations, but it's not.

Look, here's where it shows I've been in my hometown for the last year:

Image

And yes, I'm so anal-retentive that I make sure all my frequented locations are arranged in as perfect a grid as I can manage. :rolleyes:

BTW, that's NOT to let Apple off the hook. I think they effed up here and it needs to be removed. But the point is, a lot of alarmist crap has been written/assumed about this thing.
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Not surprised as this policy was set up 15 years ago and most people didn't know it.
 
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Al Coholic said:
I can't believe the idiots in this thread drinking the Al Franken kool-aide.

Really children. Grow up.
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The Apple Kool-Aid tastes no better than the Al Franken variety. Kool-Aid is all the same.

nvbrit said:
no you are wrong.. APPLE is NOT collecting location data when locations services are turned off, it is only your phone that is continuing to collect this data, it is not sent anywhere.
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Who programmed the phone to collect the information? The CIA? NSA?

Michaelgtrusa said:
If Apple loses, it will not bankrupt them like the nation is.
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Maybe they will loan the gov some of that cash they are sitting on.
 
JAT said:
For the sake of the debate, let's say that happens. All of it, plus 2 more you didn't think of. These 6 people get together with your iPhone (which you also forgot to send the delete command to after finding it missing), root it, pull the file off (ignoring your actual data, Safari cache, and other incriminating prefs for various apps, which already has more info about you in it than this file), decode the file into actual coordinates and times using software that no doubt these geniuses wrote themselves, and semi-track your location over the last month using the sporadic cell tower and wifi references contained in this file. (remember, 2 of them already know where you work)

Then what do they do? Choose a different coffee shop for tomorrow based on the ones you've been to? Find a better/worse clothing store to shop at? Slowly learn traffic patterns from your habits to speed up their commute? Stand on a street corner that you might frequent to...idk, give the phone back? :rolleyes:

I mean, I guess if you are a hitman for the local chapter of [insert least favorite ethnic group here] bangers, then maybe you don't want anybody to know where you've been...but I don't care if you get caught, then. And besides, you'll probably have found them first and taken all 6 out before they figure out what to do with the data.
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Think like someone that wants to be malicious...

Assume for a minute your wife is having an affair on you. You don't know it of course because... well... she is doing it behind your back. You find out. Things go down hill. Seperation. And on to the divorce. No one remembers the iTunes backup file. Once the divorce proceeding starts, all hell breaks loose. No chance of ending this thing amicably. And now both parents want to have full custody of the children. So she grabs the iTunes backup and gives it to her lawyer. Together they start coming with a nice little story of how you are such a bad dad or mom. Maybe you are rarely home. Always come home late. Often stop at the bar after work. Whu knows.

Ok, maybe there is no circumstantial eveidence and it's not a problem. But maybe there is.

And there is no reason to. Personal information should be treated securely by all companies that have access to it.

Is this a far fetched story? No. These little database files are probably being emailed to lawyers all over the country as we speak.
 
This is stupid.. the data is store in your phone and there is no way make avail to anyone unless u sync to your PC and your PC is share with other.

Or unless you Jailbreak your phone... else it is just a store data.

If this is a big issue, then I can tell you, your telco know 24/7 where you are in the world. Cause your phone is always connected to the nearest cell tower and I don't think any telco have any problem locating you...:p
 
keigo said:
This is stupid.. the data is store in your phone and there is no way make avail to anyone unless u sync to your PC and your PC is share with other.

Or unless you Jailbreak your phone... else it is just a store data.

If this is a big issue, then I can tell you, your telco know 24/7 where you are in the world. Cause your phone is always connected to the nearest cell tower and I don't think any telco have any problem locating you...:p
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Because Visa knows where you shop and how much you spend, does that mean it's ok to have it un-encrypted on your phone?
 
TheSideshow said:
Except secured
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The information isn't completely unsecured either. You can't tap a button and pull it up on a phone unless you jailbreak it and install an app to do just that. So in the sense that you can't view the file system on a whim it is secured.

As for losing the case, the contention is that Apple has a way to track where phones are and are doing so with a warrant etc. So the judge may require them to prove that Apple is ever in possession of this information with or without anything that identifies a particular handset or the owner of said handset. Otherwise it's really a non issue since the information can be erased by restoring your iphone and setting it up as a new device and then deleting all backups.
 
Vegasman said:
Think like someone that wants to be malicious...

Assume for a minute your wife is having an affair on you. You don't know it of course because... well... she is doing it behind your back. You find out. Things go down hill. Seperation. And on to the divorce. No one remembers the iTunes backup file. Once the divorce proceeding starts, all hell breaks loose. No chance of ending this thing amicably. And now both parents want to have full custody of the children. So she grabs the iTunes backup and gives it to her lawyer. Together they start coming with a nice little story of how you are such a bad dad or mom. Maybe you are rarely home. Always come home late. Often stop at the bar after work. Whu knows.

Ok, maybe there is no circumstantial eveidence and it's not a problem. But maybe there is.

And there is no reason to. Personal information should be treated securely by all companies that have access to it.

Is this a far fetched story? No. These little database files are probably being emailed to lawyers all over the country as we speak.
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I understand that the tracking file aids in quicker connections to cell towers which also translates to better battery life. That being the case I actually want my phone to do some location tracking. If it gives my iPhone better performance, I'm all for it. Apple just needs to see to it that the file is encrypted.

The Apple haters are (again) out in droves trying to create some conspiracy and evil-doing scenario. The reality is someone at Apple just crapped the bed. The file should have been encrypted all along but wasn't. All that Apple is guilty of as far as I'm concerned is human error, that's all.

While the file should really be encrypted, at the end of the day, I can still password protect my iPhone, iPad and Mac. I can even lock or wipe my mobile devices remotely if I choose. I honestly don't know why people are making such a fuss about this.

Now if Apple was harvesting my whereabouts and selling the info without my prior authorization, I'd be really pissed. (edited for spelling. Ugh)
 
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Mike84 said:
Sued for breaking what law?
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The suit would be for misleading the consumer. By giving you the option to turn off Location Services the user is led to believe their device is no longer keeping a record of their location when in fact it actually is.

It would be like Face Time recording even though you turned it off.
 
manu chao said:
It is not an invasion of privacy, it is an unnecessary (and unpublicised) risk to your privacy.
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IF I get my hands on your iphone or your computer then the risk to your privacy is my getting my hands on your address book, your auto logging in bank records etc. NOT that I might find out what cell towers you have been hanging out around.
 
charlituna said:
IF I get my hands on your iphone or your computer then the risk to your privacy is my getting my hands on your address book, your auto logging in bank records etc. NOT that I might find out what cell towers you have been hanging out around.
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There are so many other privacy breaches that are worse than this file which is so hard to get and decode.

Sue Microsoft for Internet Explorer being insecure :D
 
charlituna said:
IF I get my hands on your iphone or your computer then the risk to your privacy is my getting my hands on your address book, your auto logging in bank records etc. NOT that I might find out what cell towers you have been hanging out around.
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Yes. All of it. It all needs to be encrypted and protected. Is that too much to ask? No. And what people are doing now is asking. And what's going to happen is all this stuff will get encrypted.

I am not being alarmist or a hater. It's just the way it needs to be. Plus, it's not that hard to do. There is no excuse really.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

charlituna said:
TheSideshow said:
Except secured
Click to expand...

The information isn't completely unsecured either. You can't tap a button and pull it up on a phone unless you jailbreak it and install an app to do just that. So in the sense that you can't view the file system on a whim it is secured.

As for losing the case, the contention is that Apple has a way to track where phones are and are doing so with a warrant etc. So the judge may require them to prove that Apple is ever in possession of this information with or without anything that identifies a particular handset or the owner of said handset. Otherwise it's really a non issue since the information can be erased by restoring your iphone and setting it up as a new device and then deleting all backups.
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Oh is that all?

Stop
Making
Excuses.
 
faroZ06 said:
There are so many other privacy breaches that are worse than this file which is so hard to get and decode.

Sue Microsoft for Internet Explorer being insecure :D
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Interestingly, Microsoft seems to have finally gotten the importance of security and privacy.

On the Windows Phone for example, precisely one record of this type of information is persisted.
 
WiiDSmoker said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)



Oh is that all?

Stop
Making
Excuses.
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Fanboy of MS. I've seen your other posts :rolleyes:
 
Vegasman said:
Interestingly, Microsoft seems to have finally gotten the importance of security and privacy.

On the Windows Phone for example, precisely one record of this type of information is persisted.
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Yeah they're not as bad anymore but still insecure. I haven't really used Windows 7, but I know that Vista and earlier were horribly insecure as well as the old versions of Explorer.

I still hate it when a popup comes up telling me about the information bar blocking a popup :rolleyes: at school where we are forced to use Vista.

As you can tell by my signature, Word is still quite sketchy security-wise. You shouldn't be able to get a virus in a Word document that activates when you open it!
 
First, there has to be an illegal act

There can be no privacy violation unless someone first commits an illegal act.

The phone is your property, right? It is your property that is saving your location info onto itself, in order to better serve you. Your property is not sharing this info with Apple or anyone else, just with another computer of yours that stores backups.

So, your info is secure unless someone commits an illegal act to get it, through non-return of a lost object, outright theft, or information hacking.

If the loss of this extremely imprecise location info somehow injures you, prove it, and sue the thief. Alternatively, you could sue your phone
 
It shows cell towers you were in the vicinity of.

BIG DEAL.

Where's the violation??

If this qualifies as "tracking", then tracking is about an imprecise exercise as you can possibly get.

But it makes for great political fodder and hollow lawsuits.
 
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