[liberationtech] iPhones/iPads secretly track 'scary amount' of your movements

[Adam Fisk]

This debate seems to be missing the heart of this issue. The
locally-stored file is child's play. Both Apple and Google are
reporting your location over the network using HTTP POST requests and
are storing it on their servers. I agree we should not be surprised,
but that's a big deal. If they store that information over time, they
could theoretically be subpoenaed for any users location by MAC
address at any time.

Note this is different from straight tower tracking. That's of course
a huge issue too, but it's different. This is reporting your location
however they can determine it -- GPS or cell triangulation -- as well
as the MAC addresses of any WiFi networks you're in proximity of --
directly to Google and Apple's servers out-of-band.

The locally-stored stuff has implications for potential exploits from
third-party apps, sure, but to me the fact that both Apple and Google
are actually recording your location on their servers all the time is
the much bigger story.

-Adam


On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Frank Corrigan
<email at franciscorrigan.com> wrote:
> More reasons for activists/protesters in hostile (ordinary) environments
> not to bring along their mobile phone, latest cell connected gizmo.
>
> "The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an
> easily-readable form on your machine"
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/20/secret_iphone_location_tracking/
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-- 
Adam Fisk
http://www.littleshoot.org | http://adamfisk.wordpress.com |
http://twitter.com/adamfisk