Scanning the news, the title of this story caught my eye, “Your iPhone Is Secretly Tracking You All The Time.” Okay, I loved 1984. I’ll bite.
What is my iPhone tracking and why?
Files stored on my iPhone itself as well as on my computer contain a record of where I have been and when I was there. As explained by Rosa Golijan, the author of the above mentioned story, “These files are basically very long lists of latitude-longitude coordinates and timestamps, and they can be found on the devices themselves as well as within the software backups saved on users’ computers.”
Later that day, while searching amazon.com for all the gear needed to live comfortably in an underground bunker, a friend of mine sent me this alternate perspective on the Apple iPhone tracking issue. Alex Levinson, the author of “3 Major Issue with the Latest iPhone Tracking “Discovery”‘ pointed out that California state law prohibits the use of an electronic tracking device to determine the location or movement of a person. “Apple is not harvesting this data from your device. This is data on the device that you as the customer purchased…” Levinson goes on to show us that this information is “neither new nor secret.” And that this tracking feature was written about in 2010.
The tracking information is being used by third party applications. For example: when you type a restaurant into google.maps, the information on your phone creates the starting point for the directions to get there.
Its my understanding from both articles that the only way one can access this information is through one’s own iPhone or one’s own computer. So, it would be a problem only if someone stole one of these devices. The major issue seems to be that the information is unencrypted.
I guess I can keep living above ground for the time being…though 2012 is right around the corner…