- From: Karl Dubost <karld@opera.com>
- Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:01:58 -0400
- To: "public-privacy (W3C mailing list)" <public-privacy@w3.org>
Geolocation and data retention.
Today at Where 2.0 Pete Warden and I will announce
the discovery that your iPhone, and your 3G iPad, is
regularly recording the position of your device into
a hidden file. Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device
has been storing a long list of locations and time
stamps. We're not sure why Apple is gathering this
data, but it's clearly intentional, as the database
is being restored across backups, and even device
migrations.
The presence of this data on your iPhone, your
iPad, and your backups has security and privacy
implications. We've contacted Apple's Product
Security team, but we haven't heard back.
What makes this issue worse is that the file is
unencrypted and unprotected, and it's on any machine
you've synched with your iOS device. It can also be
easily accessed on the device itself if it falls
into the wrong hands. Anybody with access to this
file knows where you've been over the last year,
since iOS 4 was released.
— http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/apple-location-tracking.html
--
Karl Dubost - http://dev.opera.com/
Developer Relations & Tools, Opera Software
Received on Wednesday, 20 April 2011 14:02:29 UTC