The lead item in last week’s In the news post here on iPhone J.D. was the controversy arising out of the discovery that there is a file on your computer containing what appeared to be a track of everyplace that you have gone with your iPhone. Because a “bad guy” would need access to your computer to tap into such data — at which point you have much larger concerns — I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and last Friday I linked to articles written by others who felt the same way. But since I wrote that post last week, I heard from a lot of you who had much more concern than me, and Apple has received similar feedback. Thus, Apple took the unusual step yesterday of responding to these concerns in several ways.
First, Apple posted a published a Q and A style press release to address this issue. Apple explained that the data was part of a cache used to quickly determine where you are. When you use location services on your iPhone, it would take up to several minutes to find your location just using the GPS chip, so Apple also stores information that helps the phone to figure out your general vicinity by figuring out which cell towers and WiFi zones are nearby. This is good for users because your iPhone can “know” where you are located much more quickly, but that data was being saved — and for a long period of time — in backups to your computer. Thus, Apple was not really saving a history of where you were, but instead was saving a history of nearby cell towers and WiFi hotspots so that when the iPhone was once again in that vicinity it could quickly figure out its location without waiting for the GPS chip. Apple explains in the Q and A that Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone and has no plans to ever do so. If you have any questions or concerns about the iPhone location data that has been in the news for the last week, read Apple’s full press release right now to get the real story. For example, Apple notes at the end that an upcoming software update will save far less of this data and stop backing it up to iTunes on the computer. [UPDATE 5/4/11: That update is now released: iOS 4.3.3]
Second, three top Apple executives — CEO Steve Jobs and Senior VPs Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller — talked to Ina Fried of the Wall Street Journal and All Things D to set the record straight, resulting in this edited transcript and this article by Ina Fried.
Third, someone from Apple wil soon be headed to Washington to discuss this issue. Congressman such as Sen. Al Franken have asked Apple and others to answer questions on these issues, and Steve Jobs told Ina Friend that “They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course.” It will be interesting to see who Apple sends to Washington.
Even though I still think that this story was blown way out of proportion, I do respect those who were more concerned than I am. I certainly appreciate the need for privacy, and if you are really concerned about the possibility of someone learning where you are located, you probably shouldn’t even carry a cell phone, whether it be an iPhone or something else. My understanding is that the law is unsettled on whether cops even need a search warrant (and thus need probable cause) to get information about your location from your cell carrier. But whever you stand on thie iPhone location data saga, hopefully these answers from Apple will satisfy your concerns.
I ran the app that maps your location database for my own phone backup, and looked at it several levels of resolution.
You could not see very much on it. The location dots are not places you’ve been– they’re, I gather, the cell towers nearby. In areas you spend a lot of time, there’s a rough grid of dots. It doesn’t locate where you were closer than a matter of fairly many city blocks. I also have the sense that the time of sampling doesn’t make for very high resolution in tracking.
It hasn’t the kind of detail that would make for much use in evidence in court, say, unless someone was denying being anywhere close to a place and the tracking showed they had been. That said, there are a few inexplicable dots in my database– e.g. one in Alabama on the highway from Tuscaloosa to Columbus, Mississippi. I’ve not been within 50 miles of that spot.
You could not use my data to figure out where either my house or my office is– you might know there are a couple of places I spend a lot of time within 2 miles or so of a couple of spots but that’s about it. And you can answer those questions with a phone book.
I think it’s unfortunate for them to have been doing this without explanation, but I don’t see this as that alarming. I’m more bothered by having tweets or blog posts location-identified than this, by far.