5 ms·
It isn't. Apple is sending your location and the MAC addresses of other devices your phone sees. It's been doing this for nearly a decade since I believe their
by threeseed 5y ago
It isn't. Apple is sending your location and the MAC addresses of other devices your phone sees.
It's been doing this for nearly a decade since I believe their acquisition of WifiSlam back in 2013. They use it roughly triangulate a device's position when GPS/Cellular is not available.
- ssss11 5y agoSo someone else’s device, if it can see theirs, is sending their MAC to Apple. That is what they said isn’t it? Edit: he/their
- yuuu 5y agoPhew! What a relief that they're only sending other people's MAC addresses and not my own!
- tyingq 5y agoThe research paper confirms it isn't sending the MAC address, but says it is sending the hardware serial number. I assume Apple has table to lookup up the MAC from the hardware serial number. So there's really no difference, is there?
- nomel 5y agoWhy assume that Apple keeps lookup tables like this for customer identifiable information?
- uoaei 5y agoThe zeroth law of cybersecurity is: If you can imagine it happening, it is safest to assume that it is already happening.
- nomel 5y agoIt’s unfortunate that Apple isn’t more transparent about their data retention times/policies, so imagination wouldn’t be required.
- ignoramous 5y agoOr... a whistleblower.
- croon 5y agoWe know they collect the information. Supposedly because they find it useful. How do you think they're using it?
- awsthro00945 5y agoThe first sentence and the second sentence of your comment contradict each other. If Apple is using iPhones to pair location and MAC addresses of nearby devices, that is indeed "location being tracked by other people's iPhones".
- bigiain 5y agoAnd Apple have clearly decided that’s ok, because that’s how AirTags work. Whether your (and everybody else) iPhone and gps helping tell where my stolen bicycle is, is a good enough benefit to outweigh the privacy trade off is a good question (that Apple never asked me before opting me into their global Bluetooth surveillance platform).
- dpkonofa 5y agoThey do actually ask before doing this. It's a question that you have to answer when you first updated to iOS 14 or that you answer when setting up a new iOS 15 device.
- Shared404 5y agoBut they never asked the non-apple users whose information is being transmitted, unless there's something I missed.
- judge2020 5y agohttps://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ They weren't fined whatsoever for the collection of the data. The fine was for stonewalling the investigation. > But, the commission said, Google did not engage in illegal wiretapping because the data was flowing, unencrypted, over open radio waves. At what point does reading unencrypted radio waves on open-use frequencies become an invasion of privacy? It'd be like a restaurant owner requiring people get permission before being able to write down the restaurant's name. If it's possible to passively read it for free, you can't control who views it.
- gizdan 5y agoIf they know my location, and other devices's MAC address, surely it stands to reason that they know those those devices's location?
- onion2k 5y agoThey use it roughly triangulate a device's position when GPS/Cellular is not available. That's the benefit that they expose to the user. What they do with the data as well as that is only known to some people in Apple.