Richard Hughes’ blog

Like everyone else, I read the iPhone tracking story with some interest and downloaded the application from here . I’ve been having a quick look at it. A few points spring to mind.

It does look like the iPhone is getting its location data via cell phone triangulation. It’s saying that I’ve been to places I know I haven’t. For instance, my parents live by the south coast. The application shows I’ve been to the Isle of Wight which I know I have not done for years. This looks like it’s recording data based on which cell tower I’m currently connected to. Looking at the map, the location points all appear in a grid pattern. This also works when mobile data is switched off. I have been to Spain and Holland this year and on both trips, switched off all mobile data to avoid roaming charges. Both locations are shown by the application.

This gets a lot more interesting/scary when you run the time sequence. I can see dates of trips I have taken to various places as location dots appear in different parts of the map. This means you can work out roughly when you have been to certain places. Again, the precise details aren’t shown but you get a pretty good idea.

I have mixed feelings about this. Partly horror based on the idea that the device is tracking this data and maybe sending it back to Apple. However, this seems unlikely as sending the data back violates California state law and whatever you may think of Apple, I doubt they’d do this. Mitigate this against the fact that the mobile phone company can do this anyway, as can a bank whenever you use a payment card, as can traffic cameras whenever you drive etc.

For me, a bigger area of concern would be if someone stole your phone or hacked into your computer with the backed up data. They’d easily be able to see where you have been and when. One saving grace is that zooming into the map, you can’t actually tell where I live from the data. You’d certainly get an idea of the vicinity as it’s an area most visited but you can’t tell where our house is or even the street. Besides, if you had access to someone’s phone or computer, you’d probably have their address already.

I also dislike the idea that you can’t switch this off or even purge the historical data. I wonder if this could be done by finding the specific file in the phone’s backup directory, truncating the file then restoring the phone from backup.

There is another part of me that thinks “cool”. This means I can find when I went to certain places without having to remember. I like the idea of a location logging app that helps you remember when you have been to places. It looks like this is already done. It’s a shame there is no way to disable or control it.

I wonder how long it will be before there are sites with malicious code that will extract this location file and send it back to a web site.