Security Researchers Reveal iPhone And iPad 3G Record Location Data In Hidden File
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Security Researchers Reveal iPhone And iPad 3G Record Location Data In Hidden File
Security Researcher Alasdair Allan at the University of Exeter has revealed that iPhone and iPad 3G regularly tracks your iOS device and records the co-ordinates along with timestamp in a hidden file.
Allan and Pete Warden will speak about this topic at O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference that started yesterday at Santa Clara, CA.
Allan has provided the following details about the information that is being recorded:
Comments
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no not really
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Yes. Actually.
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I mean.. They have ways to look up your location at any time anyways so I'm not too concerned with it. Now if they started basing adverts and crap off location and being annoying, then I'll care
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This is BS. This "feature" should be made optional and people have a right to be aware of it. Hiddenly incorporating something like this in iPhones and iPads is a sneaky act.
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another step for world order
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It's funny because they do. I live in the SF Bay Area, and I get adverts that often times focus right in my neighborhood.
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I mostly think this is just for wifi connections, since if you in a area that you clicked forget network, it will remember it a month later.
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Now I will finally know if my girl has cheated on me on that day
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This is nothing new. We can turn off gps and location services, but to receive a phone call, we'll still have to be tracked. How else do you think the call narrows you down to the nearest cell tower?People are over reacting over something that is so common, every smartphone has it. It's like using your credit card at walmart then saying your credit card company is spying on you because the receipt tells them which walmart you were at and what time you made the purchase.
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it is quit scary , but it is not accurate at all . moreover , if you encrypt your backups , you shouldn't be too worried about it . The main concern would be a cheating wife or husband , and as i said , it is not accurate enough to give an adress. It's not the first time we find apple tracking our lives with iphones , if you remember , there is an applekill switch .... i'm pretty sure if you read the legal notices , the mention this so we , apple customers are technically aware of this and we accept their terms and condition ...... this is how to bypass the system ...... legal notices longer then the bible.
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Wifi goes by the name (SSID) not your location! If the name is changed it'll pop back up and if two wifi have the same name it'll try login with the last password used
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Who cares... Let my spouse see where I've been... I'm not a cheater!
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Hi Thanks for the information I would "Encrypt iPhone Backup" under the "Options" area. Privacy is always a big concern with new technology.
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Combine this with what the Michigan State Police are doing and it does start to get scary. (If you don't know, they have begun extracting all photos, contact lists, text messages, and GPS data from cell phones of anyone stopped for any reason... just don't confuse 'anyone' with 'everyone' as the hardware is too expensive to be given to every officer.) So if you pulled over they now have a permanent record of everywhere you've been since you updated to iOS4. Yes, the data technically occurs in most cell phones, but most cell phones don't make essentially permanent and unencrypted databases of the data. And, FYI, the hardware used by police bypasses password locks on at least 3000 devices.
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Why would I worry? I have nothing to hide! Invasion of privacy? Maybe, but there are other possibilities, like tracking dodgy folk, ie terrorists!
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And Apple says they are the best in security.
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I am quite scandalised. I await a *prompt* response from Apple.
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Riight ... so you think Apple Corp. are the police now?
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how can i download iphonetracker windows version..?
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ALL THIS DRAMA STARTED AS SOON AS THE SMARTPHONES CAME OUT...SO...SOMEONE MUST BE TRACKING UR B@TT......... DUH!:p
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It will be very beneficial to locate any location by using this iphone. But the people of underdevelopment country is out ability to buy it.So, The price should be kept within financial capability and Ed Butowsky can advise you to control it.
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Is it safe to remove consolidated.db? I found two copies of it on my phone. It would be fairly simple to write a script to remove it and schedule it to run regularly in crontab.
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If its true Bye Bye Iphone like forever and ever !!! Nothing else smart any normal man cant say .Only if love 2 live in matrix !
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So you want irrelavent ads and spam?I think it's good that where ever I am I have up to date ads that are focused on my CURRENT location.Maybe they should delete the log every update that is made, but still I think the data is needed. It causes no privacy issues where you LAST where, as that person using your phone is the last place.
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Nope this is not for Wifi tracking, this is using cell tower triangulation. I looked at the consolidated.db file in detail, there are several tables, cell location is the main one that tracks the details, for most part I personally found it to be benign, it shows me in the vicinity sometimes within a couple miles. There is a Wifi table that tracks all the Wifi locations along with their mac addresses, but doesn't mean I'd connected my device to them.
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I don't believe there is a window version. They have made the code open source.. just in case anyone wants to compile a windows version.
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I don't know what the implications of removing the db file would be. There's a jailbroken app called untrackered that runs in the background and cleans up the entries from this file. That would be the best bet. I am also certain Apple will fix this in the next release, I read some blogs related to that today.
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I enjoyed your article, considering it relates to a financial matter based on iphone. I follow Danny Wettreich online, he's a famous financial advisor.
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