
Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release) - andysinclair
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html
======
sounddust
I often travel internationally (with no data roaming) and I've noticed that
the iPhone's A-GPS is incapable of determining my location when I arrive in a
new place, even if I've pre-loaded my route/maps in the maps application prior
to arrival. But once I've connected to the internet - even for a few seconds -
my phone is permanently able to track itself in that city, even after I've
left and returned months later.

It's going to be unfortunate when I can't do this anymore because of people
blowing this issue out of proportion. I hope Apple will at least provide the
option of caching this data for longer than 7 days.

~~~
diminish
your need is too exotic and mainstream concerns about location/timestamp
tracking on iphone are real, valid concerns.

~~~
epistasis
The location/timestamp concerns are only relevant when my phone has been
stolen or somebody has unrestricted access to my computer. At that point,
location tracking is only one of many many terrible things that can happen to
me, and frankly it's nowhere near the most terrible. And if I'm concerned
about somebody tracking me, I'm going to be most concerned about the last 7
days, not the past year. If you're concerned about the government tracking you
for longer than a year, they easily have access to that data without your ever
knowing they looked.

The solution is to properly protect your data on your phone and your computer.

~~~
r00fus
Your solution is asinine, as I have little way to protect my "cache" of
goods... it's unencrypted both on the device and in the backups (though you
can encrypt backups now, there might be previous computer backups of mine that
have unencrypted location data, now I have to go find and excise those).

Any malicious desktop tool can easily find the location cache in unencrypted
backups. Modern Police Forensics tools (<http://www.cellebrite.com/>) can
easily extract non-encrypted data from phones in minutes (see Michigan
Police).

That Apple stored this growing set of user-data in cleartext on the device was
as stupid as Sony storing their customer's personal information in cleartext
(or weakly hashed) on their servers.

Either bit-recycle the information that's not immediately relevant, or
strongly encrypt/sanitize it. This shit isn't rocket-science, folks. Otherwise
it's a liability and potential PR nightmare in the making.

We're now still in the "wild west" of personal data records. Once these issues
start to snowball and real-life consequences happen, people will clamor for
litigation, which given politicians will be over-reaching and ham-fisted.

Corporations with hundreds of millions of users' personal data should stay in
front of these issues unless they want to wade in a regulatory mess (see
Google's mis-steps with wifi packet data).

~~~
epistasis
I'm sorry, but my solution of "protecting your data" is "asinine"?

You also say that you have little way to protect your data, and then in the
next sentence tell me how to do it.

Are you really trying to evaluate the situation, or are you more interested in
attempting to criticize in any way that you can stretch words?

~~~
r00fus
As of right now, anyone with an iPhone can have their localization data ripped
from their device in less than 5 minutes via cellebrite. It could be a
coworker, police office, or immigration official.

How is that secured?

~~~
epistasis
You need more than 5 minutes, you also need access to the computer associated
with the phone:
[http://www.cellebrite.com/images/stories/support%20files/App...](http://www.cellebrite.com/images/stories/support%20files/Apple_iPhone_Passcode_Bypass_instructions.pdf)

------
sklivvz1971
_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_

This actually makes sense - looking at the logs on my iPhone and iPad, the
locations where pretty far away from the places where I usually roam, and
actually there was a very great deal of places where I've never been, not even
close.

~~~
cooldeal
>and actually there was a very great deal of places where I've never been, not
even close.

How does that make sense? It should only cache the locations of cell phone
towers it was in the range of. Are you seeing data that was more than 100
miles away from the places you were at?

~~~
andos
Nope. It's a local (geographically speaking) slice of a huge database of
hotspots. There is a concentration of points downtown, a few points at the
local airport, others at touristic destinations nearby. Most are places I've
never been at.

It is nothing but a very neat cache. The nerd in me is sad to see it go.

------
extension
Ironically, shrinking the geolocation cache will result in more frequent
requests to the server, making it theoretically easier for Apple to track your
location.

~~~
mcantelon
GPS doesn't require requests to a server, AFAIK.

~~~
alphakappa
In practice, it does. The reason you get fast fixes is most likely due to
AGPS, and that would require getting aiding data from a server.

------
thought_alarm
I use location services on an iPod touch almost daily and without a network
connection. The location cache is currently limited by size. It seems to hold
about a small city's worth of wifi hotspot coordinates, which is downloaded in
large blocks at a time.

Reducing the size of the wifi location cache to a mere 7 days could severely
reduce the usefulness of that feature.

I really hope they're not killing a great feature because of some hysteria and
bad reporting.

~~~
roc
When the update moves and encrypts the cache, it's really anyone's guess as to
how long the history will go back.

If it's going to harm use, I don't doubt Apple would turn that 7 into a 14 or
a 30 without batting an eye.

------
yalogin
This is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I have seen this more and more lately, the standard reaction to anything Apple
in the tech community is pitchforks. I have a feeling subconsciously we all
want Apple to fail at something and try to latch on to anything remotely
blamable.

~~~
cooldeal
>I have seen this more and more lately, the standard reaction to anything
Apple in the tech community is pitchforks. I have a feeling subconsciously we
all want Apple to fail at something and try to latch on to anything remotely
blamable.

I think that's a counter reaction to a whole bunch of people who think Apple
can do no wrong at all.

~~~
roc
Funny how those people always come up in conversation, but we never seem to
catch them in the act.

------
pieter
_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_

I hate it when companies use 'encrypted' like it would somehow make your data
more secure in their hands. They mean here they use something like SSL so
snooping the traffic is impossible, but of course they can still read what
you're sending, otherwise the information would be useless to them.

The claim that apple can't identify the source of the data is also highly
dubious. If they wanted to, they could probably correlate your IP with the IP
used to access your iTunes account. That they don't do this is one thing, but
claiming that they can't is something else.

EDIT: come on HN, since when did we start downvoting stuff you don't want to
hear? This is a valid point, if you have critizism just leave a comment. If
you want to downvote something, do it on the summary comments. Sheesh.

~~~
yalogin
I understand being cynical but in this case the keyword is anonymous. The
encryption is for protecting in transit like you said.

In order to populate their wi-fi/location database they really don't have to
send over a person's IP to the server. In fact its something they don't want I
would assume as it adds absolutely no value to the data. They already know who
you are and where you are don't they?

~~~
pieter
They receive your IP address because that's how IP works; otherwise they
wouldn't have an address to send data back (and IP packets with a spoofed
source IP are dropped immediately). They might not do anything with it, but
they definitely have access to it.

~~~
ugh
Sure, that's why they say "anonymous". If they do not delete the IP address as
soon as technically possible they are lying about the anonymous part.

This is not about ability. This is about trust. They say the data is anonymous
which means they are obligated to disregard the IP address and to not log it
anywhere.

~~~
pieter
"This is not about ability"

Sure it is. That's exactly what the following statement means: "Apple cannot
identify the source of this data". How can you interpret that as anything else
but their ability of identifying the source?

The statement is obviously not true; if they were forced to, by a government
agency for example, to track the location information from a user from that
point on they COULD; saying they can't is wrong IMHO.

The correct thing to say here is that they can, but they don't, unless forced
to. But I guess that isn't the message Apple wants to communicate.

~~~
ugh
If you want to be super petty about it, sure. I don't think that sentence is
supposed to be read that way.

------
foobarbazetc
Oh no, reasonable and accurate information. Plus a list of things they plan to
do to fix it.

What will we all hate on Apple about next?

~~~
cooldeal
So you think the people who were reporting on these issues and caused Apple to
fix them did it to hate on Apple? Tthe issues were real and not made up
because Apple is now fixing them. Would they have fixed it if every reporter
acted like Gruber? Why do some people take it as a personal insult if people
point out that Apple can ship buggy software?

~~~
apinstein
I think people jumped to the conclusion that Apple was logging your actual
location, which would be a big deal, and published it as fact. It's a great
story and gets traffic.

That said, I cannot imagine that if they'd contacted Apple about the issue
they would have gotten a useful answer without the publicity.

Bottom line though is that any sufficiently sensational story gets traffic
regardless of its truth or lack of attempt to even verify the veracity of the
alleged problem.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
There were plenty of sensational stories, sure. There were also many
reasonable stories that debated what was being tracked, many of which were
discussed on HN. You can't invalidate a story because some people become
sensationalist, that _always_ happens on any controversial story.

~~~
apinstein
I am sure that lots of people discussed the story; but the original story that
kicked it all pitched it as an "Apple is tracking you and the guys in black
suits are using it to convict you of crimes" story.

------
DanielBMarkham
_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_

 _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._

I think a lot of folks who spent money on Apple products are going to be happy
with this, and for that I'm glad.

But I didn't find this release adequate. Apple is not tracking me -- they are
keeping a time-stamped list of nearby access points on my device, which
effectively is a huge breadcrumb trail of everywhere I've been and when. Apple
doesn't know it's me -- because the data is encrypted, which makes no sense at
all. Whether data is encrypted or not is meaningless. Can I go to the Apple
server logs and track incoming downloads and associate them with the data or
not? I strongly suspect the answer is "yes". If not, that's great, but that
wasn't described here.

The killer omission? That Apple has been doing all of this -- which is at the
very least controversial -- without informing the users in a manner in which
they clearly understood it. The response we see is simply a reaction. The
"bug" here is getting caught.

I don't necessarily see anything nefarious at work, but I'm troubled with the
idea that Apple was keeping a list of my whereabouts (the nearest access
point, for those of you who are literally-minded) without my knowing it.
That's a pretty serious breach of user trust, no matter how many times it was
covered in the 47-page lawyered-up doc that nobody reads.

But like I said, folks are willing to cut Apple lots of slack, and they
deserve it. But hell if I'd want to see something like this happen again, from
any manufacturer. I'm not so sure that vendors are getting the point.

~~~
yaix
>they are keeping a time-stamped list of nearby access points on my device,
which effectively is a huge breadcrumb trail of everywhere

Read again. They are not. Its not timestamped when "you" where there, but when
some anonynous iPhone picked up that particular hotspot. It got then uploaded
to Apple and subsequently downloaded onto your iPhone, so that your iPhone can
find its location easier.

Wasn't that kinda the obvious reason in the first place?

~~~
bigiain
I'm pretty sure that's true. I'm going to try find some time this evening to
animate the points out of the database from my phone to prove it to myself.
I'm guessing the animation will show random segments of trails that anonymous
iPhone users have travelled around my neighborhoods, but nothing I'll
recognize as a trip I've made. (I'll blog about it at bigiain.com if I find
anything interesting)

~~~
somebear
Then you will write a very interesting, but somewhat misleading blog post,
just like everyone else has written in the past few weeks.

The point is that the database on your phone is a subset of the greater
(global) database mapping wifi and cell access points to location. The local
database contains timestamps of when your phone downloaded the information.
The global database only contains a list of access points and approximate
locations of those access points.

That way, when your phone sees an access point it can look up in the database
(locally or globally) and see if this access point has been pinpointed, if it
has it will be another tool for your device to provide you with a proper
location.

In other words: animating the points in your database will show the first time
your phone downloaded information about a specific access point, which will
give you a trail of your movements (to a certain extent limited by the factors
mentioned above).

------
ajdecon
_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._

Looks reasonable to me. The only thing missing that I'd like to see is an
option to opt out of the tracking data (anonymous or not).

~~~
fredoliveira
See, but that would be crazy. If what they're saying is true (and there's no
reason to doubt it at this point), they're using this in order to provide you
with a service: the ability for your phone to know where you are in your city.
Calling it "tracking data" is wrong, even.

Given their description of how the cell tower/hotspot data is used, it seems
like deleting "this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off" is
the opt-out you are looking for.

~~~
lukeschlather
>Calling it "tracking data" is wrong, even.

I wish people would stop saying this. Of course it's tracking data. There's
nothing wrong with that. One of the phone's features is tracking your location
so you don't get lost.

Personally I think Apple has overreacted. They just need to provide a
configuration setting for the size of the cache, and more importantly not
include it in backups. A cache is not important enough to back up. But as far
as the size of the cache, the defaults sound sane enough.

~~~
jmreid
You could also call the IP address that you're sending email from 'tracking
data' if you wanted.

Hell, I get a text message from Rogers the second I land in the US to let me
know that roaming rates apply. The fact that I have a device that has to talk
to another end point means that I can be tracked.

~~~
lukeschlather
Yes, I would call that tracking data. But unlike IP address headers, this
cache contains information that is _by design_ displayed to the user to help
track their location.

------
msravi
1\. This explanation seems to ignore the timestamps that are stored along with
the hotspots/towers data. What do the timestamps represent? The time when the
cache was downloaded onto the phone?

2\. Speculatively, the way this seems to work is, that the phone identifies a
tower, say, with ID12345. It then looks up the crowdsourced database for the
tower with this ID, and queries it for all towers/hotspots within X miles
radius. The result of the query is logged into the consolidated.db file, along
with the current timestamp.

3\. I don't know about the 100 miles number, but for me, in an urban setting,
it certainly seems to be accurate upto approximately a mile or so, that
together with the timestamp, gives a reasonably accurate picture of where I've
been, and when.

~~~
glenra
If the goal is to only keep the data around for, say, 7 days, you need
timestamps to determine when each piece was last downloaded, no?

------
packetlss
So it was a bug after all.

This was one of the best responses out of a big corporation I've seen in ages.
They even explain the function of it, not often that you see that.

------
tjogin
_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._

Interesting. Apple generally does not pre-release information about upcoming
products, at all. They must have felt their hand forced in this, or Jobs is
not at the helm of this press release (which I'm sure he is).

~~~
mrcharles
IMO the most interesting thing -- I was just daydreaming on the way to work of
a mapping app that basically tracked your route, and compared timestamps of
movement against expected times to generate an accurate realtime traffic map
when shared with a central server.

The problem with traffic info right now is that it's always either laughably
late (see sirius/xm traffic info) or it's based on eyes-in-the-sky style
updates from radio, which you can only get every period of time.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Google Maps on Android does exactly that, it's great. especially in the summer
time, makes it easy to find ways around construction.

------
rakkhi
Great clear response from Apple. Patch is a good outcome, turning off location
service actually stopping tracking and limitation to 7 days are very good
moves.

------
geuis
So now the usefulness of my phone gets degraded because Apple has to pander to
people that don't understand what the actual situation is.

------
famousactress
Meh. Everyone sucks at press releases this week (thinking about you, Sony).
This just seems so much more bloodless, dispassionate, and frank than it ought
to. It's obnoxiously contrary to write "The iPhone is not logging your
location."

I mean, really? That's just argumentative. My mom is gonna look at the
location history visualizers people wrote and respond "Really, Apple? Cause
this looks very much like _log_ of my _locations_ ".

Somebody at Apple's PR needs an ass-kicking. This ought to be a video with a
short transcription from someone on the phone team (not Jobs) that just
explains it without getting defensive of semantically tricky.

------
ramen
I assume that my ancient iPhone 3G will be exempt from this privacy update.

~~~
ralfd
As this is a security fix I bet there will be an iOS 4.2.2

------
sudonim
"The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to
fix shortly"

A bug _you_ uncovered?

~~~
mcantelon
Two lies: the "bug" was uncovered a considerable time ago (August 2010 was
when I read the first story talking about it) and was first exposed by third-
parties (so if Apple did "uncover" it, they've been sitting on this discover
for some time).

[https://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-
issues...](https://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-with-
the-latest-iphone-tracking-discovery/)

~~~
jws
You speak of the symptoms of the bug as if they were the bug, consider this
one act play:

• The internet claims Apple is tracking all iPhone owners!

• Steve Jobs interrupts family time to exclaim "WTF!"

• SJ: "Minion! Verify this claim!"

• Minion: "It is true, to the extent that we keep large, possibly unbounded,
volumes of cell tower and wifi access point in the cache for the purpose of…"
SNICKER-SNACK… thump.

• SJ: "Engineering, fix this. Marketing, communicate this.", returns to family
time.

• Engineering to engineer: "Fix this."

• Engineer to self: "I do not know why this happens, _I will search and
uncover this bug._ " <<<\--- there, that is where the bug is uncovered. He
fixes the purge code from whatever simple or broken strategy the first coder
used, perhaps deleting the comment that says "// might need to prune the
cache, but the OS probably does that when it gets too big"

• Marketing: "What? We were busy hiding the links on the home page until you
respect our new iPad2, but ok, we can crank out a press release if it saves us
from the vorpal blade."

DOWN CURTAIN // insert character development and pathos before first rehearsal

------
nutjob123
A huge hole in this press release is how apps use location information. An app
can easily log a user's location and send it anywhere along with whatever
other data the app has access to.

~~~
X-Istence
Since you have to individually give each app permission you should go talk to
the App developers. The apps use the location API that is available, and don't
have direct access to the cache if that is what you are worried about.

------
jitbit
"You're not slaves - this collar just looks good on you!" (c) Strugatsky
brothers, "The Doomed City" novel, 1988

------
brudgers
> _"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."_

Some are located more than 100 miles away because the database contains every
location ever logged. Despite the fact that hotspots and cell towers over the
horizon cannot play a role in accurately determining your location, Apple's
response is intended to create the impression that they play such a role and
thus justify permanent storage.

Furthermore, short of magic, there is no way to send a relevant subset of the
crowd sourced data to an iPhone without first knowing both the location of the
iPhone and its unique identity.

> _"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."_

Apple is trying to create the impression that storing the data from which
location can be triangulated is somehow significantly different from storing
the actual location and again creating misdirection with the reference to
"more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone."

> _"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."_

In an interesting shift of language, Apple's answer is technically about the
person's location rather than the location of the iPhone and it could be
argued that in this context "source" refers to the person using the iPhone
rather than the identity of the iPhone. Given that "cannot" rather than "do
not" is used, the limitation does not correlate with something in an algorithm
since an algorithm can be changed to identify the specific iPhone.

~~~
executive
> Furthermore, short of magic, there is no way to send a relevant subset of
> the crowd sourced data to an iPhone without first knowing both the location
> of the iPhone and its unique identity.

If you consider recording the id of the cell tower the phone is connected to
magic..

~~~
brudgers
If Apple can do so without tracking the location of the iPhone and knowing its
identity, yes. But then the scenario you propose admits that Apple tracks the
location of the iPhone to some degree.

The most charitable case would be that Apple only tracks location based on the
cell tower to which the iPhone is connected. The worst case is that it tracks
location based on every hotspot and celltower the iPhone sees.

Since the most charitable case would produce the least predictive power when
selecting a relevant subset of the crowd sourced data and the worst tracking
case would produce the most predictive power - and given the level of detail
reported to be stored on the iPhone is consistent with the worst case and less
consistent with the most charitable case - the worst case scenario regarding
tracking would appear to be more likely.

~~~
revscat
The device ID is not necessary for such a query to be successful, though. If
you as the device programmer were interested in getting the subset of the
cache for your location, the method signature would need be nothing more
complicated than:

    
    
      +(DBConsolidated) subsetForDevice:(NSArray *)visibleTowers:(NSArray *)visibleHotSpots
    

So even in the "worst" case described by you no identifying data is sent. This
could possibly be statistically analyzed, but given Apple's flat denials, a
plausible technical reason, and the public attention this has received, I
doubt they are lying here. A whistleblower providing evidence contradicting
their "we don't track" claims would be devastating, and possibly open them up
to legal action. I don't think they are quite that careless, although it is
certainly possible.

~~~
brudgers
The "flat denial" is in response to Apple's ability to "locate me" not "locate
my iPhone." Elsewhere, Apple is very specifically making claims about the
iPhone.

"Anonymous" is pretty slippery and there is no agreed upon technical
definition (just ask EFF), but it literally means "not identified by name" so
one could argue that sending tracking data based on your device serial number,
IP address, phone number, location, contacts list, etc. is still in an
"anonymous form." [somewhat similar to debates about the technical meaning of
"open"].

I'll add that the information you are proposing to send to Apple is enough to
clearly identify your location - or rather the location of the iPhone, and
short of Apple using Tor or a similar approach to making the message's route
through the network untraceable, the data in "anonymous form" can likely be
disanonymized.

------
RyanKearney
>Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so
and has no plans to ever do so.

Alright...

>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.

...... The collection of anonymous traffic data involves tracking your
location to determine what road you're on and what speed you're going. They
can't even get their story straight.

------
dabeeeenster
"The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database
of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location"

So, it's logging your rough location...

~~~
techiferous
The intention matters. For example, you could look at my mail client and
accuse me of constructing a database of Ruby developers in the Boston area.

~~~
sachinag
Heh, that'd probably be worth in the neighborhood of $500K given how many
openings there are for Rubyists in the Boston/Cambridge area.

------
scorpion032
> 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.

Wow!

------
delphi42
"In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on
the iPhone."

Great, thanks a lot! Now I no longer have the option of viewing what law
enforcement will be able to get anyways. Nor will I have access to what
essentially was a pretty neat database to look through.

~~~
eli
Not to sound flip, but if you're concerned about law enforcement tracking your
movements, you should leave the phone at home.

~~~
jkahn
Not flippant at all. Law enforcement can track where you are through your
telco even if you don't have a fancy phone. And they can do it live.

~~~
pieter
That probably only works for local telco's. With Apple's info, US agencies can
track anyone with an iPhone in the world, even if the telco's there don't want
to cooperate.

~~~
ja2ke
... After they physically seize your phone or home PC, to read this only-
locally-stored file, of course.

------
diminish
this q&a is misleading a bit. iphone downloads locations around hotspots u
have already been close to by timestamping, and it means ur approximate
location+timestamp was logged indefinitely on ur phone and copied to PC,
though indirect.

the whole q&a is a simple game words to trick users. `apple is not tracking ur
location` but `your approximate location is downloaded, timestamped and stored
on ur mobile phone due to a bug`

this whole wording is can't even trick a child.

look at the result.

------
Cherian_Abraham
From the press release:

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.

....

Let me guess...Where, all roads lead to Apple?

EDIT: I posted this fully knowing it will be unpopular. But reading the press
release gave me the feeling that Apple was using a sleight of hands by turning
the public's focus from the privacy and security issues this incident has
amplified and brought to the public's view, and instead is saying "Gee..We
were doing y'all a favor by building a better maps app, and now you come along
and screwed that up". Security is not an afterthought people. Hasn't the Sony
fiasco that is still unraveling taught us anything?

