[Fredslist] iPhone location tracking

Thu Apr 28 09:39:48 EDT 2011

Very nice, thanks Corey (and Jonathan).

I must chime in - since we did this at my office.  We connected my iPhone to
the computer and ran the software everyone is talking about.  There are some
semantics that are making it so Apple saves face here.  Fact of the matter
is....we ran the software and it knew everyone I've been for more than 1
year.  If that's not "tracking," I'm not sure what is.  I saw it with my own
eyes.

 Danny Mizrahi

 p:  (212) 737-0608
 m: (516) 606-4326
 f:   (877) 737-2282
 www.contangoit.com

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Corey Bearak <bearak at aol.com> wrote:

> I received this explanation (see below) from my son who remains my
> unofficial tekkie (sorry that he remains generally unavailable because he
> pursues another professional calling but we have some fine computer
> consultants in Gotham anyway).
>
>
>   *Corey B. Bearak, Esq.
> *Government & Public Affairs Counselor
> P.O. Box 135, Glen Oaks, NY 11004
> (718) 343-6779 ♦ facsimile *(888) 379-3492
> *Bearak at aol.com <bearak at aol.com> ♦ CoreyBearak.com <http://coreybearak.com/>
> *♦** *Bearak on Twitter <http://twitter.com/Bearak>
>
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> On Apr 27, 2011, at 10:17 PM, Jonathan Marc Bearak wrote:
>
> Only since you sent me an email forwarding some posts worried/complaining
> about location tracking...
>
> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html
>
> According to Apple, they didn't respond until now (a week later) b/c they
> weren't sure what people were talking about, and needed to investigate, and
> then figure out how to explain it to non-compuer scientists.
>
> The file that people claimed was Apple tracking locations is actually a
> database of WiFi hotspots and cell phone towers, some dozens of miles away.
>  It's a cache which the phone uses to speed up the process of finding one's
> location.  With pure GPS, it could take really long, so the iPhone keeps a
> cache of cell towers to triangulate, and then further uses this data to pick
> which GPS satellites to pay attention to.  That said, this data is also sent
> anonymously to Apple -- that's how they match the cell towers and hotspots
> with locations in the first place.  As it turns out, they arbitrarily set
> the size of the cache to 2 MB.  This stores way more information than is
> apparently necessary, so they're going to shrink its size.  They're also
> going to encrypt it and remove it from the phone backup program.  So, this
> was a little bit of a mistake, but it didn't actually track people's
> locations -- it was a cache containing the coordinates WiFi hotspots and
> cellular phone towers, so the phone can calculate this offline w/o
> contacting Apple's servers. =
>
>
> The link Jonathan provided goes to this text:
>
> April 27, 2011Apple Q&A on Location Data
>
> Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received
> about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.
>
> 1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
> Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so
> and has no plans to ever do so.
>
> 2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
> Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while
> preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical
> issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused,
> partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have
> not provided enough education about these issues to date.
>
> 3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
> The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a
> database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location,
> some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your
> iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location
> when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data
> can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few
> seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS
> satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and
> cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements).
> These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced
> database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of
> millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi
> hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.
>
> 4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?
> The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we
> download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is
> protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up
> your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings
> in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is
> not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of
> Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can
> be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease
> backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update
> section below).
>
> 5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower
> data?
> No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple
> cannot identify the source of this data.
>
> 6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being
> stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to
> assist it in finding my location today?
> This data is not the iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the
> crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from
> Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately
> calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we
> uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We
> don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.
>
> 7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue
> updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced
> database?
> It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software
> Update section below).
>
> 8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides
> crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
> Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced
> traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic
> service in the next couple of years.
>
> 9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third
> parties?
> We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to
> third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising
> system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared
> with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the
> current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate
> the Target store nearest them).
>
> 10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are
> important?
> Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give
> their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple
> will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information
> security and privacy.
>
> *Software Update*
> Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software
> update that:
>
>
>    - reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower
>    database cached on the iPhone,
>    - ceases backing up this cache, and
>    - deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.
>
>
> In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on
> the iPhone.
>
> *Press Contacts:*
> Natalie Harrison
> Apple
> harri at apple.com
> (408) 862-0565
>
> Natalie Kerris
> Apple
> nat at apple.com
> (408) 974-6877
>
> NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple’s PR website<http://www.apple.com/pr/>,
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