If you’ve been watching the news recently, you may have heard a story regarding the fact that the iPhone stores logs on the phone and computer documenting locations where your phone has been. It is being called a security issue because this information is not encrypted and is easily accessible, and because no one was made aware of the fact that this information was being collected.
Frankly it strikes me as sensationalism. Cell phone carriers frequently log this sort of information to improve coverage and analyze usage patterns. The fact that forensic investigators can pull this information from my device means nothing to me as a law abiding citizen, and the geographic coordinates contained therein are typically so inaccurate that I wonder what one could even do with such information. I might even go so far as to call the iPhone location tracking a feature, if logging accuracy was improved. Lots of companies pay good money for GPS tracking devices on fleet vehicles, all the better if that information could be extracted from existing company phones.
In the strictly IT sense, yes, Apple should have disclosed what information is being logged on the iPhone, especially in this day where privacy is such a sensitive subject for people. But personally I think people are getting a bit carried away over it.
Leave a Reply