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Researchers Disclose iPhone and iPad Location-Tracking Privacy Issues

iisforiphone said:
i hear ya, but even before iphones - how many people have a number stored as "home" or "wife" in their address book with that number i can do a reverse lookup and see where you live, our infomation has been out there forever its only now that apple is doing it, now its news worthy
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No it's Apple. Therefore it's no big deal. Which is the problem. If this was google you'd be singing a different tune. Just like Google accidently collecting useless data packets for mere seconds as they drove by houses with unencrypted wifi networks.

Additionally, you have the ability to request an unlisted phone number. That has been out there forever as you say.

Furthermore, you can even request via court order that your property information be blocked from showing up on Recorder and Assessor websites.

You have had the ability to be private, or not be private. That's been your choice for forever. However, Apple doesn't provide the choice to have this data stored, or not have this data stored.

#1. Provide the option to the user to not require the data to be stored
#2. If they opt in, encrypt the damn data.
 
Clutch21 said:
No it's Apple. Therefore it's no big deal. Which is the problem. If this was google you'd be singing a different tune. Just like Google accidently collecting useless data packets for mere seconds as they drove by houses with unencrypted wifi networks.

Additionally, you have the ability to request an unlisted phone number. That has been out there forever as you say.

Furthermore, you can even request via court order that your property information be blocked from showing up on Recorder and Assessor websites.

You have had the ability to be private, or not be private. That's been your choice for forever. However, Apple doesn't provide the choice to have this data stored, or not have this data stored.

#1. Provide the option to the user to not require the data to be stored
#2. If they opt in, encrypt the damn data.
Click to expand...

ok i get you should have the right to use someone else product and service and have it all "your" way, google isnt any better then apple for the crap they do, nor is any other unknow company that tracks all kinds of crap about us that we dont even know about

all im saying is if you want to stay private you have to stop friggin connecting to networks
 
Tracking back to your home...

Hmm, using the App I found on this forum, I accessed a database file for an iPhone 3G that I no longer have but still have the backup for on my system. After examining the information from the app I can draw at least one valid conclusion. There is no way that someone could guess where my home is based on this data. I honestly think that this information is probably there by accident rather than design. All I really have is a pretty reliable map of where the cell towers in my town are located. I would think that this information would be more useful to an AT&T competitor.
 
iisforiphone said:
your choice is not use any devices that connect to any networks of any kind
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My choice is to have a choice! LOL haha.

But no really. For the people that don't understand and don't get this. I think it's irresponsible of any company to do something like this. Not just apple.

Yes people have a choice to not use the product. They also have a choice to be upset when they are told one thing and then something else happens.

For instance, well if you turn off your location services a user would imagine that it's off. When in reality it's not.

I'm sure you have seen it many times when you install applications on your computer, etc. It usually has an option at the end that says "Allow Company X to receive anonymous statistics to improve your experience". I always select no. so if it doesn't follow my "No" then it's going against what I agreed to.

In this instance, Apple should provide the following as part of a good user experience which I assumed was kinda key to Apple anyhow:

Allow the user to clear the data whenever they want to.

Why wouldn't that be allowed?
 
Clutch21 said:
My choice is to have a choice! LOL haha.

But no really. For the people that don't understand and don't get this. I think it's irresponsible of any company to do something like this. Not just apple.

Yes people have a choice to not use the product. They also have a choice to be upset when they are told one thing and then something else happens.

For instance, well if you turn off your location services a user would imagine that it's off. When in reality it's not.

I'm sure you have seen it many times when you install applications on your computer, etc. It usually has an option at the end that says "Allow Company X to receive anonymous statistics to improve your experience". I always select no. so if it doesn't follow my "No" then it's going against what I agreed to.

In this instance, Apple should provide the following as part of a good user experience which I assumed was kinda key to Apple anyhow:

Allow the user to clear the data whenever they want to.

Why wouldn't that be allowed?
Click to expand...

its shaddy its wrong and should be illegal no doubt, but i bet its in that 100 page user agreement somewhere but who really reads thats, point is if your connecting to cell phone towers, and gps satalites and you dont think that info is being monitored or stored somewhere your dreaming
 
iisforiphone said:
its shaddy its wrong and should be illegal no doubt, but i bet its in that 100 page user agreement somewhere but who really reads thats, point is if your connecting to cell phone towers, and gps satalites and you dont think that info is being monitored or stored somewhere your dreaming
Click to expand...

More than likely as with all big corporations.
 
Found something interesting. Check out Apple's response last year to inquiries about location information:

http://markey.house.gov/docs/applemarkeybarton7-12-10.pdf

Excerpt:

"First, customers have always had the ability to turn "Off" all location based service capabilities with a single "On/Off" toggle switch. For mobile devices the toggle switch is in the "General" menu under "Settings." For Mac computers running Snow Loepard, the toggle switch is in the "Security" menu under "System Preferences." and for Safari 5, the toggle switch is in the "Security" menu in Safari "Preferences." If customers toggle the swtich to "Off" they may not use location based services, and no location based information will be collected."
 
iisforiphone said:
if your going to connect to someone else network then yes they can see where the device is? why is that so hard to understand? why are you using someone else network?

did you think you owned that connection you were on? or that it was a private network?
Click to expand...

Sorry, what right does AT&T have to record my entire location history and store it in an unencrypted file on both my laptop and iPhone without telling me? I think you'll have to clarify that one for me.

What *is* clear to me is how it affects my personal security.
 
kdarling said:
Something is missing from the picture here.
Click to expand...

Never mind. I see that the answer was already given in Post #362:

The purpose of this is offline (locating).

Normally, each cell tower has an identifier and Core Location sends that identifier to Apple and asks for the lat/lon for that tower. This requires a data connection, and the use of data.

Since cell towers don't move, however, it's inefficient to keep going back to Apple for that information so they cache it.

Now if a tower appears with the same ID as the cache, tada! you have a cache hit and a faster fix with no data use. Which also means you can get a "course location" (as in rough) if you are near known towers and don't have a data connection.
Click to expand...

That's all this is. It's a cache of identifiers (cell and wifi), locations, and their age (it's a cache, after all). Someone made the decision to never clean it out...
Click to expand...

Thanks to Nebrie for posting that. Makes perfect sense. It also makes sense that the developer who did the cache, never thought about it causing any PR troubles like this. Perhaps the developer never even went outside Cupertino :)
 
aperry said:
Sorry, what right does AT&T have to record my entire location history and store it in an unencrypted file on both my laptop and iPhone without telling me? I think you'll have to clarify that one for me.

What *is* clear to me is how it affects my personal security.
Click to expand...

no not "right" but shouldnt be surprising
 
kdarling said:
Never mind. I see that the answer was already given in Post #362:





Thanks to Nebrie for posting that. Makes perfect sense. It also makes sense that the developer who did the cache, never thought about it causing any PR troubles like this. Perhaps the developer never even went outside Cupertino :)
Click to expand...

Which makes no sense because AT&T's service still sucks LOL. No use mapping routes, still sucks.
 
my question is what are people doing to protect their privacy when connection to a network of any kind with any device regardless who makes that device?


are your relying on the same people that let you use that network to give you your desired privacy?

ip address give away your location, gps signals are outgoing and incoming, every time you connect to a netork regardless if its celular or data its giving away your location.

as soon as you connect you have already made your privacy uncertain

put down all the gizmos and gadgets then worry why the goverment can still watch you from outer space, but to wonder why your tracked when you did the connection is bogus
 
iisforiphone said:
my question is what are people doing to protect their privacy when connection to a network of any kind with any device regardless who makes that device?


are your relying on the same people that let you use that network to give you your desired privacy?

ip address give away your location, gps signals are outgoing and incoming, every time you connect to a netork regardless if its celular or data its giving away your location.

as soon as you connect you have already made your privacy uncertain

put down all the gizmos and gadgets then worry why the goverment can still watch you from outer space, but to wonder why your tracked when you did the connection is bogus
Click to expand...

<<< Private VPN service. iPredator.se
 
Clutch21 said:
<<< Private VPN service. iPredator.se
Click to expand...

does that hide your IP?

now that this is know that apple is doing this someone will find a way to mask or hide it too, its jsut a shock at the moment because everyone thought apple was their buddy and cared about their privacy

bottom line we have to stop putting our info out their to make it accessible, tracked or monitored

companies have started to roll out, finger print and rentinal scanning for "security" and people will all think wow so cool or great idea, not even realizing all they are doing is put their fingerprints and retinal scanning on file for the wrong reasons, everything is not what it seems
 
iisforiphone said:
does that hide your IP?

now that this is know that apple is doing this someone will find a way to mask or hide it too, its jsut a shock at the moment because everyone thought apple was their buddy and cared about their privacy

bottom line we have to stop putting our info out their to make it accessible, tracked or monitored

companies have started to roll out, finger print and rentinal scanning for "security" and people will all think wow so cool or great idea, not even realizing all they are doing is put their fingerprints and retinal scanning on file for the wrong reasons, everything is not what it seems
Click to expand...

Yep, private vpn. Completely anonymous. Secure encrypted connection to vpn servers in sweden run by the guys from PirateBay. Hides your IP and provides you a new one, their VPN servers additionally keep no logs.
 
iisforiphone said:
my question is what are people doing to protect their privacy when connection to a network of any kind with any device regardless who makes that device?


are your relying on the same people that let you use that network to give you your desired privacy?

ip address give away your location, gps signals are outgoing and incoming, every time you connect to a netork regardless if its celular or data its giving away your location.

as soon as you connect you have already made your privacy uncertain

put down all the gizmos and gadgets then worry why the goverment can still watch you from outer space, but to wonder why your tracked when you did the connection is bogus
Click to expand...


These are hardly equal. When I connect my laptop to a network, yes, I do give some location data contained in the IP address. To the ISP or network infrastructure, it's almost exact location data. To anyone else, it's a rough approximation. For example, I'm sure Comcast knows exactly where I am based on my current IP address, but all public IP lookup tools show me as 10 miles away.

But the important part is that it's only for the time that I'm sitting with my laptop on that network.

With the iPhone, it's completely different. The phone is constantly monitoring and documenting everywhere I travel and it's much more precise compared to an IP address (at least in terms of what the general public can tell about the IP address).

Kind of hard to compare what is happening here to "what happens anytime you join a network".
 
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