Over the past few days, the internet has literally been abuzz with the news that your iPhone is constantly tracking your location and saving it on-board the device. The news has sparked privacy concerns so much so that even US Senators are demanding answers as to why Apple is doing this. On the contrary, John Gruber from Daring Fireball, a renowned Apple critic, believes that Apple may not be doing this intentionally. Rather,
he feels that this is a bug which Apple may fix in the upcoming iOS update, probably iOS 4.3.3 or iOS 4.4.
"The big question of course, is why Apple is storing this information. I don’t have a definitive answer, but my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn’t, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that’s meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history. I’d wager this gets fixed in the next iOS update."
As of now, we have seen no comment from Apple on this whole issue. Even if this is a bug that Apple overlooked, or if Apple wants to patch this as discreetly as it can, an iOS update is the only way to address people's concerns on this issue. We'd love to hear your thoughts on why Apple would want to track the location of its customers. Sound off, in the comments below.
he feels that this is a bug which Apple may fix in the upcoming iOS update, probably iOS 4.3.3 or iOS 4.4.
"The big question of course, is why Apple is storing this information. I don’t have a definitive answer, but my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn’t, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that’s meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history. I’d wager this gets fixed in the next iOS update."
As of now, we have seen no comment from Apple on this whole issue. Even if this is a bug that Apple overlooked, or if Apple wants to patch this as discreetly as it can, an iOS update is the only way to address people's concerns on this issue. We'd love to hear your thoughts on why Apple would want to track the location of its customers. Sound off, in the comments below.
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