

Your iPhone maps and logs where you are and when you're there - mikeyanderson
https://www.codefellows.org/blogs/your-iphone-logs-where-you-are-and-when-you-re-there

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eddieroger
Not news, and also not news, it's easily disabled. Besides, all this shows is
that the phone knows, and there are actual uses for it that make me leave it
on, like predicting how long it will take to get home or common places I go.
As for it's use in advertising, that can be reset as well as opposed to
disabled, so I reset that periodically.

Also, this isn't unique to iPhone, [1] and hasn't been since it was discovered
on Android as well.

1\. [http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/04/21/its-not-just-the-
iph...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/04/21/its-not-just-the-iphone-
android-stores-your-location-data-too/#!p7JT9)

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mikeyanderson
Everyone that I showed this screen to on their own phone hadn't ever seen that
it existed. It's one thing for the phone to log it in some database. It's
another that anyone could pick up your phone and see where you live, work,
what time you come home, etc.

~~~
cmsj
it'd be awfully tough for them to just go to the Contacts app, pull up your
card and see your address :(

Use a passcode for goodness sake! Actively protect your data!

~~~
halviti
Passcodes are easily bypassed. Buy an XRY and you can get into any phone.

[http://www.msab.com](http://www.msab.com)

Same way the police do it.

~~~
superuser2
Modern iPhones are entirely encrypted while locked. The key resides in a
crypto processor and is irreversibly destroyed during a brute-force attempt
(provided you have this turned on).

These devices need certain plists from the phone's trusted iTunes library (if
it even has one) to "break" into modern iPhones.

(Some) Android phones might be vulnerable to these though.

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mnem
"Your iPhone maps and logs where you are and when you're there" ... only after
asking if you want to enable location services when you get a new phone.
That's not exactly "on by default".

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chadgeidel
Hasn't this been known for quite some time? Here's an article from 2011:
[http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/iphone-
tracks/](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/iphone-tracks/)

~~~
mikeyanderson
There's a big difference between a data file hiding somewhere and a full on UI
with logs and maps that anyone could pick up your phone and see. Everyone I've
showed this too was surprised.

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eyesee
A big difference with this over Google (or NSA for that matter) is the
location history stays on your phone and isn't logged on a server.

~~~
mikeyanderson
I believe when I first looked at it, the option to store on their server was
turned on. But also people are carrying around a subpoena-ble log of
everywhere they've been without knowing.

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egwynn
Was this ever a secret? I thought this was a relatively prominently advertised
feature in iOS 7.

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sailfast
This has been "known" for a long time, but not known widely enough that I see
it turned off when I ask my friends with iPhones about their data.

Typically the first thing I do is ask them if they want targeted ads pushed to
them based on their location and they say "no" and I proceed to borrow their
phone and disable everything buried in that menu under Privacy except
(perhaps) the compass calibration.

~~~
Steko
How clever of them to "bury" all the privacy settings in a Settings menu
called "Privacy".

~~~
mikeyouse
Up until iOS7, the ad-tracking settings were under:

"Settings" -> "General" -> "About" -> "Advertising" and not with the rest
under "Privacy".

And then they helpfully used a double-negative when describing the behavior of
the function, the default state was: "Limit Ad Tracking -- Off"

Apple are far too good with usability for either of those choices to be
accidental.

~~~
Steko
So why change it in iOS 7 if they are out to "bury" it and trick people?

"Apple is far to good to do X" is not a strong argument. They can and do make
mistakes all over the place including their strongest areas.

~~~
sailfast
I applaud the move to the "Privacy" context menu, however you must also
consider that in addition to the "Advertising" menu at the bottom, there is
also a "System Services" sub-menu located at the bottom of Location Services
which delivers location-based ads, diagnostics and usage, frequent locations,
and "popular near me" settings. These were not exactly called out before the
iOS7 update, and nobody reads the ToS so I was disappointed to see it buried
so deeply given the focus on privacy with the new menu.

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pseudometa
Unlike the NSA, I actually see some personal benefit to this.

~~~
jreed91
I agree too. I like being able to pull down my notification center and have it
know where I usually go to provide relevant traffic alerts.

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selectout
I know this has been discussed many times since the iOS 7 beta builds first
release, but recently there has been a nice interface Google has released to
see this data from your google account. Uses anything logged in with your
google account (phone, computer, tablet, etc) and puts it in one central area.

[https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0/](https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0/)

~~~
dpcx
This interface has actually been in existence (in one form or another) since
Latitude first launched.

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digikata
Isn't this basically one use of the motion co-processor collected data that's
a feature in the iPhone 5s?

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warmfuzzykitten
My iPhone doesn't have Preferences, it has Settings. What kind of iPhone is he
using?

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warmfuzzykitten
Ok, it's under Settings > Privacy. Odd mistake to make. When you get there,
there's a Clear History option, so I guess if you've been to evil places
lately, you can clear your tracks. Mine has been on forever and I don't
believe an ad has ever been pushed to me, location-aware or not.

~~~
kingnight
I seem to make that mistake often when explaining where something is. Perhaps
its due to iOS's counterpart, OS X, having 'System Preferences'.

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joslin01
Now if I could only find the switch to stop the NSA from tracking me.

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ivanoats
Creepy! What kind of evil things could be done with this data?

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__m
holy sh*t they stole it from android!

