

Visualize your iPhone's location tracking map in 100% client-side Javascript - willvarfar
http://markolson.github.com/js-sqlite-map-thing/

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brk
Interesting.

For me, the data shows a lot of where I've been, but with only the sort of
accuracy (and errors) you'd expect from tower triangulation.

It also misses some places that I frequent entirely (eg: it has almost no hits
near my weekend house or some of the local places there my wife and I visit).
Similarly shows no hits in the Pacific Northwest for me, but did seem to track
my Vegas and Santa Barbara trips pretty well (though again with highly
scattered accuracy).

Maybe it's just me, but I'm having trouble feeling very "violated" by this. If
you were to look at my map, I think you could tell the area of the country
where I live/work, but probably couldn't pick out my house or office with much
accuracy (unless there are underlying timestamps the map doesn't show).

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willvarfar
Yes all the points have timestamps and an accuracy estimate, and there is wifi
fix data too that this script doesn't show.

There is often erronous data in there too - that's not this script, that's
just that location fixes are inexact.

The _real_ violation is that you just drag-dropped your whole iphone backup to
a script written by people you don't know and running on servers you don't
control... but don't worry, we don't _care_ to profile you or sell you data...
;)

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brk
_The real violation is that you just drag-dropped your whole iphone backup to
a script_

Yeah, I guess. I just did a quick strings on the backup files, and you could
extract a fair bit of info, but it didn't seem like there was much in there
that was truly juicy.

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joeconway
What amuses me is that people complain that this information is being recorded
and then proceed to upload the database to anonymous applications to visualise
it, thus compounding the problem.

~~~
willvarfar
You can inspect the code - even run it locally.

But point taken, many will use this bit of power js without wven thinking of
the consequences...

We wrote this for fun, and to show clientside js apps can do fancy things like
parsing sqlite btree dbs raw, _despite_ the obvious privacy implications.

~~~
joeconway
Sorry, I wasn't insinuating malicious intent. It's a cool app and I used it,
it's much better than the openstreetmap version that was released!

My comment was more of a reflection of people's amusingly conflicting views.
One thing this has made me realise though is that if Apple were to just ask
their customers rather than operate with subterfuge then they could have
avoided this whole thing being a problem.

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smackfu
Just think of how many sites ask for all your demographic info like ZIP when
you sign up.

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famousactress
Nice! I didn't care enough to bother with anyone else's visualization tools..
This one lowered the barrier of entry enough for me to actually use it.

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tomkinstinch
It didn't work for me when I dragged only my consolidated.db file. That
functionality might be a nice addition.

Not everyone backs up their phone regularly, but those with jailbroken phones
can easily grab the database file over ssh.

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willvarfar
I think I added support for this, but I don't have the means to test it
myself. Do say if it doesn't work to drop consolidated.db files now.

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bcl
Doesn't appear to work with firefox 3.6.16 on Linux.

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daniel02216
What do these points actually represent? Mine shows a tremendous number of
points in the regions where I've lived and been, but no points within about
1/4 mile of where I actually live and I have definitely used the GPS there.
Also it shows some points near Las Vegas, which I'm pretty sure I haven't been
to with iOS 4.

Some points even show up in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, which doesn't
make sense if this is showing cell towers.

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consultutah
For a Windows 7 machine on a domain, the file is: C:\Users\<User-
Name>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

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kmfrk
Or better yet, %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup.

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ptarjan
It doesn't seem to show everywhere I've been. I put the whole folder in, about
2k files, and it only showed points near San Francisco even thought I've
travelled with my phone to the East Coast many times this year.

Is there a limit on your plotting points? If so, I'd do a geographic sampling
to get a good representation of my phone's life.

~~~
willvarfar
Only one of the files you dropped was the location log.

The script shows what's there, and isn't trying to be the _cleverst_
visualizer I'm afraid

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pjy04
It didn't work for me... still shows it's loading

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willvarfar
Noscript, or using an old browser, or using IE, might cause that symptom

