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Transcript of Interview With Apple Executives on iOS Location Tracking
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As I glance thru these comments ... it sure would be refreshing if the negative posters would just go away. They offer nothing and it is truly a waste of time to even glance at them. Why not offer something that is useful and others can learn from. For those of you that do bring to light informative insights ... thank you.
If you would like an informative take on the issue read:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/04/28/the-unedifying-arrogance-of-apple/
It is clear that Apple has been at best disingenuous on the issue, and at worst downright dishonest.
Not only does the data collected fully amount to tracking, but Apple also apparently patented this in 2009 - so to claim it was a 'bug' seems questionable.
Not saying other OSs do better (I don't know), but Apple can't simply say 'others do bad stuff, so that justifies us doing it'. But the dishonesty is the bigger issue.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/04/28/the-unedifying-arrogance-of-apple/
It is clear that Apple has been at best disingenuous on the issue, and at worst downright dishonest.
Not only does the data collected fully amount to tracking, but Apple also apparently patented this in 2009 - so to claim it was a 'bug' seems questionable.
Not saying other OSs do better (I don't know), but Apple can't simply say 'others do bad stuff, so that justifies us doing it'. But the dishonesty is the bigger issue.
Other indications that this is PR spin/backpeddling:
1. They picked a size of 2mb for the db "turns out it was fairly large."
If they are ENGINEERS as Jobs says - they know how big 2MB is. They also know how much ascii data they can store in 2MB. Which is HUGE. GINORMOUS for straight text.
2. Deflected the very fact that this DB is stored on the computer. A bit of spin to imply that the only way to access it is by "jailbreaking"....
"We had that protected on the system. It had root protection and was sandboxed from any other application. But if someone hacks their phone and jailbreaks it, they can get to this and misunderstand the point of that."
----
"One thing I think we have learned is that the cache we had on the systemthe point of that cache, is we do all the location calculations on the phone itself so no location calculations are done separately. You can imagine in an ideal world the entire crowdsourced database is on the phone and it just never has to talk to a server to do these calculations (or) to even get the cache.
What we do is we cache a subset of that. We picked a size, around 2MB, which is less than half a song. It turns out it was fairly large and could hold items for a long time.
We had that protected on the system. It had root protection and was sandboxed from any other application. But if someone hacks their phone and jailbreaks it, they can get to this and misunderstand the point of that.
1. They picked a size of 2mb for the db "turns out it was fairly large."
If they are ENGINEERS as Jobs says - they know how big 2MB is. They also know how much ascii data they can store in 2MB. Which is HUGE. GINORMOUS for straight text.
2. Deflected the very fact that this DB is stored on the computer. A bit of spin to imply that the only way to access it is by "jailbreaking"....
"We had that protected on the system. It had root protection and was sandboxed from any other application. But if someone hacks their phone and jailbreaks it, they can get to this and misunderstand the point of that."
----
"One thing I think we have learned is that the cache we had on the systemthe point of that cache, is we do all the location calculations on the phone itself so no location calculations are done separately. You can imagine in an ideal world the entire crowdsourced database is on the phone and it just never has to talk to a server to do these calculations (or) to even get the cache.
What we do is we cache a subset of that. We picked a size, around 2MB, which is less than half a song. It turns out it was fairly large and could hold items for a long time.
We had that protected on the system. It had root protection and was sandboxed from any other application. But if someone hacks their phone and jailbreaks it, they can get to this and misunderstand the point of that.
It's time to look into ALL OS's, mobile and stationary, to see how much data is collected. Not just apple. Let's see how wide spread this really is. I don't use a iPhone, but do own a EVO. At least under android, your told what app has access to before downloading. Since I'm using an iPad, 1st gen, am presuming it's the same as the iPhone for getting apps, doesn't state what a program has access to. Would be a nice feature.
We are tracked by ISP's and telco's anyway, per post 9/11 laws enacted. Not much we can do about it. Time to move on and stop the feeding frenzy this has generated. But I don't believe this is a bug though.
We are tracked by ISP's and telco's anyway, per post 9/11 laws enacted. Not much we can do about it. Time to move on and stop the feeding frenzy this has generated. But I don't believe this is a bug though.
What's the Surprise?
First, the English portion (or any single language) is only 5 pages, not 120. Why would you need a lawyer to understand the agreement? See below.
From Apple's EULA
Seems pretty straightforward.
Sure, Apple should have encrypted the file, not backed it up to your machine, and culled the database better. However, if you are worried about someone accessing this file from your phone or computer, you should be more worried about the fact someone has your phone or computer.
First, the English portion (or any single language) is only 5 pages, not 120. Why would you need a lawyer to understand the agreement? See below.
From Apple's EULA
Seems pretty straightforward.
Sure, Apple should have encrypted the file, not backed it up to your machine, and culled the database better. However, if you are worried about someone accessing this file from your phone or computer, you should be more worried about the fact someone has your phone or computer.
Unfortunately that article has at least one fundamental mistake about how the data in consolidated.db is obtained that leads to incorrect conclusions.
Their statement "Yes, cell towers can be “located more than one hundred miles away”, but only if you live in the Mojave Desert." gives away part of that thinking. The database does not contain a list of cell towers/locations that the iPhone has identified by itself - local geography is totally irrelevant, because consolidated.db records a list of cell towers sent from Apple. I tested this by wiping my iPhone clean, not restoring from a backup, then leaving it sit for a while on my desk on Saturday.
Within 30 minutes consolidated.db held data on about 30 cell towers across a range of 80km, and every single one had the same timestamp. It could do this because it's received a dump of relatively nearby towers and wifi points from Apple. All the iPhone has recorded of its own position is a few strong towers, sent off the IDs of those to Apple, and received back a file with info on more towers around me that may be useful in the future - Apple selects which towers, and by looking at iPhoneTracker's dump of other folks' consolidated.db files, it's across a wide wide physical range.
That's the biggie. The list of locations in consolidated.db ARE NOT DISCOVERED BY THE PHONE ITSELF - It's a list sent from Apple, and all entries are timestamped AFTER that information comes back from Apple, which is not necessarily when the phone was remotely near that location.
Wifi turned out even more distant, timewise. I (and my phone
was in a location 5km away from home, and after returning I checked my consolidated.db for any wifi points from near that place. There were none. I checked again that night, there were none. I checked again the next morning, and there they were, 1750 wifi points timestamped around 2am - that's a list of wifi points across several kilometres, for a position I was at more than 12 hours beforehand. I could have been on the other side of the country at that timestamp, or I could have been in the same place. For looking back and 'tracking' me or my phone it's about as accurate as throwing a dart at a spinning globe. For enabling me to find my own location through aGPS, it lets me find my precise location if I choose, in seconds instead of 13 minutes. I'm the one who benefits.Worth mentioning apart from the 2MB limit is that new data from Apple on the same cell towers or wifi points overwrites the old data. Last I looked at my consolidated.db, (because I haven't moved more than a few km) every cell tower in it has a timestamp of the most recent time it was updated; today that's Thursday morning (16 hours ago) There are no cell tower entries with timestamps before that, even though I've been checking consolidated.db since Saturday when it first showed a record of towers approximately near me. More succinctly, each unique object (cell tower or wifi point) only has its location stored in consolidated.db once, and that's its most recent known position as sent from Apple.
I feel this log shouldn't be readable so easily, and it could do with being smaller (There's no point to stale data from a year ago on a city I haven't been near for the same time, when wifi points and cell towers could have changed dramatically) but as for tracking? It's about as close to tracking me as carrying a bag of maps is.
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