Apple Users, Beware: iPhones Secretly Tracking Location, Experts Warn

Two researchers have uncovered a secret file on iPhones that keeps a record of where the phone has been and when it was there -- a file that's unencrypted and stored by default.

The security experts, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, created a program that lets you see just what your phone knows of your whereabouts-- and it’s a creepy sight. There’s no evidence that the file is transferred to Apple, but the maps produced by the program show details stretching back months...


More: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/20/apple-iphone-users-beware-location-tracking/

I figured this was happening since it can tell you where all your pictures were taken.

Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.
The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program.
For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers.
Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden. "We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this."




scary shit

It's called exif information. Some chicks have taken pics of themselves nude and the block they lived on could be tracked to the exif information from the picture. This information does not appear on pictures taken by Droids.

quantumleap said:

It's called exif information. Some chicks have taken pics of themselves nude and the block they lived on could be tracked to the exif information from the picture. This information does not appear on pictures taken by Droids.

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Pretty scary stuff indeed.

This is old but I think you can turn off that feature.

KingofNicotine said:

This is old but I think you can turn off that feature.

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I read you can not , its not the same as the Location feature, which you might be thinking of

Now I'm scared. Damn you Apple.