Your iPhone, iPad is tracking you

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Your iPhone, iPad is tracking you: Four things we know so far

http://www.mlive.com/business/index....racking_y.html

Researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden's discovery that the iPhone and 3G iPads keep a location history set a wave of reports and worry among cheating spouses last week.

Amid all the media bluster, here's are the four important points:

-- With a software update last June, the iPhone and 3G iPad has been updating a file called consolidated.db that uses cellphone data to keep a log of latitude and longitude coordinates and a timestamp.

-- The tracking information does not come from GPS, but from less accurate cellphone tower triangulation. So iPod Touch and iPad's with only WiFi service are not included. Even if you turn off "Location Services," this tracking information is still recorded.

-- If you were to lose your iOS device, it would take some tinkering to get the consolidated.db file off the iPhone. But since it is transferred to your computer when you synch with iTunes, seeing the data from a computer is as easy as installing the iPhone Tracker software. The iPhone Tracker does dumb down the results so they aren't as accurate as what the coordinates provided by the phone.

-- The only to kill this file is to "jailbreak" your iPhone and install an unauthorized application, which voids your warranty. To hide the incriminating file on your computer, connect your iOS device to your computer, click the iPhone or iPad and click encrypt backups and pick a password.



While it the iPhone's GPS service works faster because it is keeping a rough idea of its location via cell tower triangulation, it is puzzling why Apple would keep such an extensive log of this activity and do such a poor job of protecting it. Expect a software update soon to clean up this public relations mess.

Just a heads up...