Your iPhone maps and logs where you are and when you're there

https://www.codefellows.org/blogs/your-iphone-logs-where-you-are-and-when-you-re-there

by mikeyanderson • 13 years ago

34 30 13 years ago

selectout• 13 years ago

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/

dpcx• 13 years ago

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

pseudometa• 13 years ago

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

jreed91• 13 years ago

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.

joslin01• 13 years ago

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

eyesee• 13 years ago

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.

mikeyanderson3• 13 years ago

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.

digikata• 13 years ago

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

ivanoats• 13 years ago

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

chadgeidel• 13 years ago

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

mikeyanderson3• 13 years ago

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.

egwynn• 13 years ago

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

sailfast2• 13 years ago

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.

Steko2• 13 years ago

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

mikeyouse• 13 years ago

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.

warmfuzzykitten2• 13 years ago

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

warmfuzzykitten2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

eddieroger2• 13 years ago

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...

mikeyanderson3• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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!

micampe• 13 years ago

If someone can see this screen, they have access to your email. Did you disable email too?

eddieroger2• 13 years ago

Starting with iOS 7, passcode setup happens on first boot. If someone chooses not to put a basic lock on their device (leaving this info vulnerable) then there's much more valuable data that's also exposed.

mnem• 13 years ago

"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".

__m• 13 years ago

holy sh*t they stole it from android!

Your iPhone maps and logs where you are and when you're there

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