20 ms·
iPhone logs my complete movement profile
- thejosh 13y agoAtleast they will show you the data, unlike phone companies who hold all this data anyway. Once you have a phone device with an active signal you are tracked, and that's just not being paranoid either.
- donquichotte 13y agoBut how much of the collected data do they show you? IMO services like this should be opt-in, rather than opt-out.
- ladino 13y agoit's currently ios7 beta, i really hope they do it opt-in in the future.
- pilif 13y agoThe difference between ios7 and previous versions is not that ios7 is logging. It's that ios7 is telling you that it's logging and what it is logging. Location Services always worked this way - it just wasn't exposed to the user.
- stevetrewick 13y agoAnd perhaps when it's no longer a developer only beta - with all the additional caveats, agreements, monitoring and instrumentation which that entails - it will be.
- limmeau 13y agoExample: Visualization of 6 months of cell phone data retention of a German politician: http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention
- octo_t 13y agoIt also does analysis, similar to Google Now, that tells you how long it will take to get home from where you are now.
- ladino 13y agoa bit scary to see exactly how often and when i was where with my gf... nice to see they added a microphone privacy setting. Anyway imho it's close to a perfect surveillance system.
- northwest 13y agoI don't think it's wise to trust any such "privacy setting". What devices really need is a hardware switch allowing us to physically disconnect cameras and microphones. I've never understood why this was not introduced as a standard when laptop cams/mics started being built-in.
- tomschlick 13y agoBecause 99.99% of people wouldn't use that switch and then would call tech support because they accidentally switched it off and now their camera wont work. It already happened with those stupid WiFi hardware switches...
- northwest 13y agoI'd say that will happen for some time after you introduce hardware switches. But it will certainly wear off. I don't see that as a valid reason.
- superuser2 13y ago>But it will certainly wear off There've been WiFi hardware switches for 10+ years and it's not showing any sings of wearing off.
- bruceboughton 13y agoHow can you trust a hardware switch any more than a software switch? Granted you can take your hardware apart to inspect it, but: - can you put your laptop together again? (especially tablets) - will you be able to see the switch innards to ensure it is disconnected? - who will bother?
- eknkc 13y agoBTW, it asks specifically if you want to share the information with Apple to improve maps data before activating that feature.
- wsr 13y agoWow, this is an amazing find. I can understand that Apple/govt would love this information. But anyone has guesses on why this would be a public facing feature?
- ladino 13y agotransparency for privacy (+1 for apple)
- julianpye 13y agoFour years ago I led a project like this. In this slideset you can see on page 4 what we wanted to build and on page 5 whate we would need: http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/slides/vodafone-pye.pdf http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/slides/vodafone-pye.pdf
- ronaldx 13y agoThis is a super-interesting project, but not something I would be interested in using. If I arrive at Piccadilly Circus, I don't want my phone to tell me what service I [should need/should be using] - I want to easily and consistently access any service that I want from my phone. I want to be in control of my phone, not for my phone to be in control of me.
- julianpye 13y agoEven then people were overwhelmed by the phone functions and could not navigate the directory when they needed something quick. With people having installed tens of apps nowadays, this problem is even worse...
- ronaldx 13y agoI feel that the correct solution to this is approximately the one that now exists: allowing people to control how the navigation screens look, and control for themselves how to access the apps they use.
- 13y ago
- julianpye 13y agoIf you want to build transparent context-aware services, your system will need to create this information. Nothing new to do with the iPhone, since Telcos already have had this information for ages (and could use them anonymously) - it's good at least that in this system you see how the data is being analysed and associated with Work/Home, etc... and not that it is hidden in the background.
- Eduard 13y agoGiven current affairs, it's bad that this system doesn't inform the user about a new feature being activated on default. It is hidden in the background.
- DrJokepu 13y agoHow do you know that it doesn't? I mean it's a developer beta of an unfinished product, isn't it?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fphilipe 13y agoWhen you set up a new iPhone, it asks whether you want location services to be enabled or disabled.
- nicholassmith 13y agoActually when you setup your iPhone (including these betas) it does ask you if you want to have the feature enabled. It certainly wasn't on by default for me, I agreed to it. Granted it doesn't go into incredibly great detail of exactly what it was tracking but it does give you the gist. If the NSA wants to track you, there's far simpler ways than asking Apple to build a new product feature than can be disabled.
- roc 13y ago> "If the NSA wants to track you," It's not about when the NSA wants to explicitly track you. It's about things like their "3 step" policy, where they search this bulk data for anyone within 3 degrees of separation of an alleged "person of interest". What happens if they start working in your location data to (attempt to) infer degrees of separation? And now you're getting searched/visited/explicitly tracked/placed on the 'more-thorough screening' list at the TSA, because you happened to take some MMA classes at the 'wrong' gym in Boston and your web history had some keyword hits.
- digitalengineer 13y agoWhy do our European leaders even plan RFID in licenceplates? With this in the default 'ON' position on all smartphones they can already keep an eye on everybody. http://www.autoblog.nl/images/wp2013/tweet-2.jpg http://www.autoblog.nl/images/wp2013/tweet-2.jpg
- philjohn 13y agoStop being paranoid - they can already track you from cell tower data.
- rogerbraun 13y agoWe should stop being paranoid because we are already being tracked?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 37prime 13y agoIt is nothing new. In previous iOS, this data was not presented to users at all. Android does this too. At least you can turn this off in iOS 7 beta 5.
- ladino 13y ago- It was invisible to the normal user! - It collects these exact data since iOS 7 beta 4 and shows it since beta 5!
- reaperhulk 13y agoThis is just flat untrue. It has collected this data since b1 and I found the screen that showed it in b2 or b3 (but it was probably present in b1 as well). It also explicitly asks you if you want this feature (separate from the location services opt-in).
- antonID 13y agoI have been using the iOS7 beta since it came out, and before doing this, it had asked me for permission. This is opt-in, so if you don't like it you don't have to use it.
- blizzard30 13y agoThis does not exist :)) looked for it, and I have the same beta.
- M4v3R 13y agoIt does. Maybe you didn't look very closely, or maybe it doesn't exist on older devices (I have iPhone 4S and I have this feature).
- blizzard30 13y agoiPad mini here A1455
- M4v3R 13y agoIt probably only works on devices with GPS. If you have a Wi-Fi version of the iPad it doesn't have one, so they don't present the feature.
- HeyImAlex 13y agoMaybe just not on noncellular devices then; my iPhone 5 definitely has it.
- taspeotis 13y agoIf anybody was wondering, A1455 is the cellular model. So it should be able to collect this information accurately. Although, let's look at the title: > iPhone logs my complete movement profile (iOS7 screenshots) (protecus.de) We're not talking about iPads here.
- Aqua_Geek 13y agoMy iPhone 4 does not have this, so it looks like it's a 4s-and-above thing.
- taspeotis 13y agoCounter-anecdote: I found it on an iPhone 5 running iOS 7 Beta 5.
- northwest 13y agoSociety has accepted to be tracked all the time/everywhere with the introduction of mobile phones. If we don't like this, we should start to talk more proactively to people about the dangers our technology brings.
- greyman 13y agoIn my opinion, "accepted" is not the most precise word to describe it. If telco companies would say at the beginning: "You can buy mobile phone from us, but the part of the deal is that you will be tracked. Do you accept that?" If most people say Yes, that would be accepting it. The reality was, that it was slowly revealed over time that the tracking is being done, and most people realized it only after mobile phones became a norm and very hard to get rid of.
- northwest 13y agoTrue. I'd say that it's the responsibility of those familiar with technology to reveal what possibilities it opens up. And of course it's the responsibility of the Press to give these points the visibility they deserve. And one problem of the past was probably the disconnect between tech people and Press people (tech was not understood by the people behind the presses). Today, we have tech bloggers and social media. Let's hope this will make up for something.
- stinos 13y agoindeed. And the worst part imo is: it is simply too late now. Half the planet seems addicted to their phone and won't give it up no matter how deep it goes into your private life.
- andrewingram 13y agoLooks like they're just making visible what they've been doing for years, hardly a new controversy. 2011: http://www.pcworld.com/article/225845/Why_Apple_Tracks_You_Via_iPhone_It_Not_Why_You_Think.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/225845/Why_Apple_Tracks_You_V...
- fnl 13y agoTrue, but we all know from marketing/propaganda lessons that frequent repetition is the only way to drive a point home in most cases... :)
- BitMastro 13y agoThe same happens with Google Maps https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/ https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/ unless you disable location history. I think it's naive to suppose that your location information is not stored anywhere. Moreover, your location can be determined also if you're using a dumb-phone using cell towers triangulation.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Watabou 13y agoAndroid does this too with Google Now. iOS7 uses frequent locations, pretty much like Google Now, to provide the travel times, with traffic, between your frequently visited locations. Here's a screenshot: http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2013/06/location2.jpg http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2013/06/location2.jpg
- hahainternet 13y agoI don't think I've seen Apple copy any more blatently recently. iOS7 is bad enough but the attempt to outdo Google Now with calendar appointments is going to take a lot of hard work.
- czr80 13y agoCopy what? The idea of showing context aware information?
- hahainternet 13y agoPretty much, the new screen on iOS7 is really so close to Google Now that if Google had added it in Android 5 there would have been all sorts of arrogant smug blog articles about how Google can't innovate etc.
- northernmonkey 13y agoYou're trying too hard to find an angle where there isn't one.
- hahainternet 13y agoWith respect, accusations of copying were levelled at Apple's competition over having rounded corners on their devices, and rounded corners on their icons. Practically a carbon copy of one of Google's most advanced features is worthy of note I think.
- jbrooksuk 13y agoWhat's wrong with this? Apple are openly providing this information for you to view - rather than others who don't even warn the user. Plus, it's improving their services which you more than likely need. Why complain? You can opt out.
- _ak 13y ago> Why complain? Because the person in the article is German, and Germans love their privacy-by-default and opt-in. Datenschutz über alles.
- aw3c2 13y agoGermany has the "benefit" of having experienced the Gestapo and Stasi so there is knowledge how dangerous omniscient parties are.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoSo learning lessons from totalitarianism is totalitarian? WTF did I just read?
- ladino 13y agoi didn't complain i am just scared that they logged me without telling me.
- Terretta 13y agoOn all my devices this was defaulted off. I didn't turn it on via settings screen, but in response to an early alert box asking if OK to keep track of usual locations to help compute travel times. Agreeing turned this on.
- fredsted 13y agoiPhone asks you if you want to enable Location Services when a) you set it up the first time, and b) when an app wants to use location data
- willvarfar 13y agoA long time ago, when the first iphone location logs got attention, we made a little web-page for people to visualise this: http://markolson.github.com/js-sqlite-map-thing/ http://markolson.github.com/js-sqlite-map-thing/ Blog post: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15210221400/visualising-iphone-tracking-data http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15210221400/visua... > It turns out people have no squirms dragging and dropping their private backup files - often all their files, and not just picking out the files we ask for even - onto a webpage running code we wrote.
- lukashed 13y agoSince this is a developer preview, there are plenty of other logging options as well. For example, if you got to the Settings -> Developer -> Logging menu, you can dump all your network traffic. You can also do this on (some) application-levels, e.g. if you go to the iMessage preferences, you can enable "iMessage Logging" and "Registration Logging", same for FaceTime (though I'm not sure why any developer would need this, it looks more like this is an Apple-internal thing that they forgot to disable for the public).
- tsycho 13y agoThat's how the iOS core location API works (and it has been this way since iOS 5 atleast, if not earlier). In particular, there is a |startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges| method (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CoreLocation/Reference/CLLocationManager_Class/CLLocationManager/CLLocationManager.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/CLLocationManager/startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CoreLo...), which "callbacks" into apps that have registered with the Core Location framework for significant change updates. The update is provided generally only when cell towers change, so it is not a battery drain (or not a significant one). Hence, your mobile operator definitely has this data, and is most likely already tracking it and/or piping it to the NSA etc. Significant change monitoring is used by Google Now among other apps (I believe Facebook also does this, I find that more sneaky since they have no obvious need for it). Google Maps navigation does not use this, since it needs more granular and accurate data hence it uses the more battery-intensive location APIs. If the complaint is that it's okay for Apple to collect this data for apps to use, but there is no need to log it, especially since the user might choose to not allow any apps to access their location data, then that's a fair point. I don't know if iOS shows these logs only on the beta versions, or whether they are stored persistently on release versions as well. Source: I am a iOS dev, and have built location based apps.
- rismay 13y ago@tsycho is right. I want to provide a little more "context" to this comment. This is hacker news after all. As an aside and shout out: @willvarfar's demo reminds me of Jer Thorp's talk from a TedX a couple of years back: http://youtu.be/Q9wcvFkWpsM http://youtu.be/Q9wcvFkWpsM Background: I have some experience with iOS location APIs too. My concept was called wrkstrm (Here is a quick 1.5 minute demo I made for the AngelHack 2012 summer finals: http://youtu.be/U0adNGyXsuE http://youtu.be/U0adNGyXsuE) Apple has been refining CoreLocation almost every year since iOS 2 with a focus to battery life. A huge addition came in iOS 5 which introduced the API changes that @tsycho mentioned - significant location monitoring and geo fencing. Again, @tsycho was astute to note that this information was ALREADY being logged by the phone and provided to telcos (there was a huge scare about this a couple of years ago). All Apple did was give developers access to this data without having to hack (check out @willvarfar's demo and OpenPaths). Another aside: These two APIs are what prompted me to learn how to code. I was seriously disappointed when I found out that Apple was "cheating" the implementation of these APIs. The resolution to these APIs is crap - something like football fields of disparity. This is what started my journey into finding a more accurate way to geo fence and track locations. The screenshots @ladino linked to use a different approach to generate. This information is NEW. Also it was made possible by two sensor driven user interface innovations which seem totally irrelevant. First, in iOS 6 Apple started running the accelerometer all day with it's raise to speak to Siri feature - (simply put the phone to your ear to activate Siri). Now with iOS 7, Apple has introduced a "constant on" gyroscope, with the introduction of the Parallax effect. Now Apple can (for FREE) measure "stay" events when the iPhone is not moving (using signal processing) without necessarily resorting to expensive / inaccurate geo fencing. That is what provides the new location data @tsycho showed. Why am I so sure that this is what Apple is doing? Apple was originally planning to go even further by providing step count data (similar to the Galaxy S4's S Health data) to developers. This is only possible by running the aforementioned sensors and using signal processing. This was shown in the new iOS 7 technologies during the keynote and even in the iOS 7 beta 1 documentation, but all mentions were abruptly removed with beta 2 and beyond. Look for this is iOS 7.1 or iOS 8. If you are interested I've decided to elaborate on this post over at my nascent blog: http://wrkstrm.postach.io/post/core-location-evolution http://wrkstrm.postach.io/post/core-location-evolution
- rsynnott 13y agoYou mean that thing it asks you for permission to do when you set up the phone, and gives you a slider to disable? It actually does it? Well, I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.
- rumbler 13y agoWhat depresses me is, I see how this information could be used in many kinds of amazing ways, but since I cannot control who gets it and what they will do with it, I refuse to use it for fear that it will be used against me. It is the tragedy of the modern connected world, one that Stallman and others saw coming years ago. And it will keep getting worse.
- voodoo123 13y agoiOS let's you choose: - Whether this information is collected at all - which specific apps can access it - whether apple can receive an anonymized copy of it to improve their maps The data is stored securely on your device and you can see it delete it. What more control do you want?
- ltcoleman 13y agoI'm pretty sure this is completely against the NDA...No respect.
- incanus77 13y agoThis was covered in The Verge this week: http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4590794/ios-7-will-ask-users-to-help-improve-maps-by-sharing-frequent-locations http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4590794/ios-7-will-ask-user...
- yalogin 13y agoI thought this only happens with your permission. I remember this is in the first few screens after you update. Also in the screen shot of his it clearly shows he gave permission to remember location. Why is this news? What am I not seeing?
- joering2 13y agoIm not related to this project, but I thought its worth mentioning here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offpocket/off-pocket?ref=category http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offpocket/off-pocket?ref...