
iOS’s Significant Locations list tracks every location visited - ilarum
https://onezero.medium.com/your-iphone-has-a-hidden-tracking-list-of-every-location-youve-been-c227a84bc4fc
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sjwright
This is very old news. Apple has explained why they collate this data, how it
is used and the tight security surrounding it. And they make it simple to
switch off. The article stupidly implied that the setting is buried—no, _not
having any interface at all_ is burying it. Apple was under no obligation to
surface this data in the UI, let alone with the clarity and detail in which
they did.

If you're a privacy paranoid—well you shouldn't have a smartphone at all—but
if you have an iPhone, at the very least I'd expect you to comprehensively
circumnavigate the privacy section in Settings. It's all quite clearly
organised and labelled. If you're serious about your privacy and you didn't do
that, you're not very good at being a privacy paranoid.

[https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT207056](https://support.apple.com/en-
au/HT207056)

~~~
netsharc
The author writes well, seemingly to build up suspense and the audience's rage
"News at 11!!"-style, and I can't stand it.

Oh well, it will either fizzle or become the next thing people will actually
rage about.

~~~
jackcohen
Appreciate the nice words re: my writing! I completely hear you regarding the
tone of the piece. In retrospect, I would've probably made more of an effort
to downplay any alarmism and instead focus on a simple how-to for friends and
family who weren't aware of (and frankly were quite concerned by) this level
of tracking, irregardless of whether the information is shared externally.
Anyways, thanks again for your comment and I didn't mean for this piece to be
some sort of Apple takedown. I also should've noted that it really was meant
more for a non-tech, non-privacy savvy audience. Completely understand that
the folks in this thread probably are in the top percentiles of being
cognizant of their privacy settings, etc.

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threeseed
Everyone has known about this for quite some time.

The information doesn’t leave your phone and isn’t accessible by other
applications.

~~~
ggsp
As a clueless person who knows nothing about iOS (besides being a user) and
has heard many an iOS developer make similar statements, I've always wondered
how people are so sure about this or that data not leaving iOS devices. How is
this guaranteed? Is some of the software open source?

~~~
sjwright
Ultimately it's trust. All systems like this rely on trust at some level. Even
if you're rocking a fully open-source mobile OS, have you read and understood
every line? Can you trust your source of software patches/updates? Can you
trust your chipset? Can you trust the baseband? Can you trust your telco?

I'm not saying trust Apple, but it's difficult to list many other large
companies I'd trust more.

And at least with an iPhone I _only_ have to trust Apple. They make the vast
bulk of the product and for all the stuff they don't do, I'm confident that
they're doing good due diligence on their upstream suppliers. They'll be
checking that TSMC has manufactured their chips without changes. They'll know
every trivial detail about the supply chain into the Foxconn factories. They
know the entirety of the product they're selling better than any other phone
maker, unquestionably.

Buy a Samsung Galaxy and then you have to trust at least Samsung and Google.
But I don't necessarily trust them to do due diligence on upstream suppliers,
so I suppose you have to add Qualcomm to that list. And if your phone has been
shipped with third party software, you have to add all of those third party
software companies...

~~~
hyperpape
It's trust, with aligned incentives.

Apple currently doesn't have any method of making money off this information
that we know about, and has a lot of goodwill for protecting people's
privacy.[0] In contrast, companies like Google and Amazon have well
established ways of making money off similar information, and less than
stellar reputations. So they'll constantly have a balancing act of "how creepy
can we be?" They're trading off marginal losses (the occasional quitter) vs
revenue.

Apple is the guy who doesn't drink. Google, Amazon and Facebook are the ones
at the bar saying "I can probably handle one more".

[0] To be clear, I'm sure they could ink a deal to make money from this info
very quickly. It's just that they don't have anything outstanding.

~~~
sjwright
They could ink a deal to make money from our data, but I'm sufficiently
confident they stand to lose more by doing so than they could possibly gain.

~~~
hyperpape
Yes, I agree.

At a minimum, I think it would be a big business model change. If they just
exploited this particular bit of information, it would be a small financial
gain with a big loss of trust. To make it worthwhile, they'd have to find ways
to monetize tons of user data, at the expense of a lot of trust.

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gruez
>You are finally presented with a minute-by-minute list of your commutes to
and from your home and your method of transportation.

I checked mine and it was surprisingly spotty. Of the places I go to daily, it
only had records 50-66% of the time.

~~~
jbeales
Me too. It's only got 59 "visits" to my home. Even if we only count the life
of this iPhone, which I've had for 18 months, that's 10% at best.

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Defcon6
My Significant Locations list has always been set to off and I usually advise
privacy concious people to switch it off. With a new iPhone it's always a good
idea to go through all the settings and make sure it's all setup the way you
like it.

~~~
Nextgrid
The main problem nowadays is that defaults are unsafe. You have to explicitly
go through _all_ the settings and make sure there's nothing nefarious going
on.

~~~
dwighttk
If you believe this is nefarious... Why would you think turning it off was
going to help?

~~~
simonh
And to show that isn't just paranoia:

"When you turn off “location history” Google still tracks your location when
you use several of its key services including Maps, search and the weather.
Here’s how to really turn all of it off..."[0]

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/14/how-to-
tu...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/14/how-to-turn-off-
google-location-tracking)

~~~
zepto
The operative word being ‘Google’.

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dwighttk
I don't know how he gets to 7 layers

1 System Preferences

2 Privacy

3 Location Services

4 System Services

5 Significant Locations

I could maybe see the argument for putting System services on the Location
Services page in a separate section, but that's the only layer I'd remove if I
were being parsimonious.

~~~
jbeales
6 Hometown 7 Your actual "home" location

It's a reach, but if I was trying to inflate the "layers" count that's how I'd
do it.

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BryantD
I'm a big fan of making this transparent, but "every location visited" is
inaccurate clickbait. The article would be more useful if it explored how the
selection of locations was performed.

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ellisv
Similarly you can get your location history from Google (even if you use an
iPhone).

[https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/location_...](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/location_history)

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izacus
So... how else would that even work?

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jackcohen
Quick PSA here: I wrote this mainly for a non-technical audience (friends +
family) who was very unaware of this level of specific tracking. I completely
agree with and acknowledge that for those who are more tech/privacy-savvy this
is probably not as revelatory as the headline may suggest. But if it's a quick
reminder of being cognizant of our privacy settings and sparks a mild
discussion, then hopefully that can benefit some users. Not meant to be some
takedown piece by any means.

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kahlonel
Anyone who uses Apple Maps occassionally knows that "Significant Locations"
have been there forever.

