Pete Warden, founder of Data Science Toolkit, and Allasdair Allan, a research fellow at the University of Exeter, recently stumbled upon a database, hidden in the backups of iPhones and iPads, which contains timestamped location information for your phone. What does this mean? It means that built in to the iPhone’s operating system (iOS 4) is a set of recorded information about the cell phone towers and networks to which your phone has connected.
So what?
So, if you know how to interpret this data, you can track where someone (assuming people follow their phones) has been as long as you can get access to either their iPhone or the computer they usually use to sync their iPhone. For people with any privacy concerns, this could be a problem.
And with the release of mapping software created by the two hackers who discovered the database, you don’t even have to know how to interpret the code yourself. Just install iPhoneTracker (Mac only) on the computer you use to sync your iPhone, and you’ll be amazed — perhaps alarmed — at the level of detail of the information it shows you. The data is displayed as a map, with timestamped entries animated in a chronological sequence. You can view your entire last year’s movements at once, or play through your travels in a video.
I’m guessing, since mine does not show any South American entries, that it does not capture WiFi networks. I kept my iPhone in Airplane mode while I was in Ecuador so that I wouldn’t be charged the exorbitant international roaming fees. But I did use the WiFi connection both in my apartment and at hotspots throughout Quito. That none of these show on my map tells me that the phone’s software must be recording only information collected from cellular networks. Plus, if you drill down far enough into the map, the circles (representing a connection) stand in odd locations. That is, if this was tracking where I was, it should show a circle at my house, place of employment, or favorite restaurants. However, the circles on my map are situated in areas where cellular towers are more likely to be. In a desperate attempt to cover a breaking story, some news organizations (ahem, ones owned by Murdoch) have said that this software shows where you have been down to the level of detail of houses. While that may be, the iPhoneTracker visualizer does not show such detail.
Since I drove across the United States last year, you can see the kind of detailed information it collects. In short, as far as data visualization efforts go: pretty cool. However, the fact that Apple is recording your movements within its products (whether or not this data is being transmitted anywhere) without telling its consumers: not cool.
If you have concerns about the accessibility of this information, you should know that there is currently no way to opt out of this data collection. It does not appear as though any of the data is being transmitted to Apple or to anyone else, but the only way to add some measure of protection is to choose to encrypt your iPhone backups (an option within iTunes).
Below is a video of Pete Warden and Allasdair Allan talking about their discovery and why they decided to release the visualization tool to the public.
