There’s been a considerable amount of hullabaloo about how Apple's iPhone stores a record of the travels of its owner and on the system they use for synchronization. The data, according to Thomas Claburn’s story iPhone Software Tracks Location Of Users, is latitude and longitude coordinates and their corresponding timestamps. The data is stored in an unencrypted file on the computer and the iPhone.
I have a hard time getting worked up about this. First, location data is crucial for popular services such as “Find My iPhone,” and the many, many applications that depend on accurate location data to work. That’s the only way they can find the best sushi restaurant close to you, report your location to your favorite social media, or know the nearest theater with the movie you want to see. You get the idea.
Of course, these applications have logs. All of your computing devices pretty much log everything you do.
Second, many companies have this type of data. Many newer car models track everywhere the owner goes. Your credit card company, bank, and debit card provider knows everywhere you travel and everything you buy--unless you are one of the few who pay for everything in cash. Also, let’s not overlook the fact that mobile phone network providers have all of this data, and many of them hold it for unknown lengths of time.
And, it appears, phones based on the Android operating system do the same thing, essentially. The location information is stored in files named cache.cell and cache.wifi.
I have a hard time getting worked up about this. First, location data is crucial for popular services such as “Find My iPhone,” and the many, many applications that depend on accurate location data to work. That’s the only way they can find the best sushi restaurant close to you, report your location to your favorite social media, or know the nearest theater with the movie you want to see. You get the idea.
Of course, these applications have logs. All of your computing devices pretty much log everything you do.
Second, many companies have this type of data. Many newer car models track everywhere the owner goes. Your credit card company, bank, and debit card provider knows everywhere you travel and everything you buy--unless you are one of the few who pay for everything in cash. Also, let’s not overlook the fact that mobile phone network providers have all of this data, and many of them hold it for unknown lengths of time.
And, it appears, phones based on the Android operating system do the same thing, essentially. The location information is stored in files named cache.cell and cache.wifi.