All Sections

iPhone secretly tracks where you go, stores location and timestamps

Security experts have discovered that iPhone users are secretly being recorded- with both the location and time being stored within the phone- and any PCs that get synced with it.

Talking to The Guardian, researcher Pete Warden said, “Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you’ve been,”

Set to present their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, the researchers said couldn’t find any similar data on Android smartphones, which is sure to make Android fans squeal with delight across the internet.

This hidden data has been spotted pby other eagle eyed phone forensic types; Ryan Neal
 found some iffy locations he’d never been before in the data set, like Turkey, while Christopher Vance also noted that data in his phone seemed to have database references to WiFi spots and mobile phone signals towers.

Phone location data is already collected by mobile phone networks, but this is only made availalbe to the Police and other similar organisations, following a court order. Think Spooks.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos, commenting on the gaffe, said: “I tend to subscribe to cockup rather than conspiracy on things like this – I don’t think Apple is really trying to monitor where users are.”

You can check your own location data with this handy app (currently Mac-only) made by the researchers.
 

Source: The Guardian, FlashBoy (Twitter)

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *