Apple tracking my every move? Sorta
There's a reasonable - and justified - amount of fuss about the revelation that GPS-enabled iOS devices running iOS4 and above (i.e. most iPhones and some iPads and latest touches) are tracking and storing users location data, with apparently no option to delete it. This is potentially a security nightmare. It all came to light with an OS X app that allows you to easily grab and see this data.
Some recent posts say this is all a fuss over nothing - the data has always been there, but with the upgrade to iOS 4 is became accesible to 3rd party developers for the first time. Others are concerend about other peope getting their hands in your movement data, either illegally or legally with a court order. These are proper concerns.
But having looked at my own data a couple of thoughts come to mind. First, the app makes a little animated movie of your movements based on the data, and its really cool.
The other, more significant thing, is that its not very accurate. The first image shows the data map of a trip I took to Blackpool last October. I went by train - a very precise, known route. Yet the map show me going all over the place - as far west as Wales, as far north as the Lake District.
But the zoomed in view suggests poor data - those lines say that it either didn't colled accurately (which is counter to my other experience of GPS data on the iPhone) or it "rounds off" to store it and so the data snaps to horizontal and vertical lines that are hundreds of metres apart. Or the app is rounding off when it pulls the data.
All of which makes this interesting, rather than deeply threatening. If I was on trial and part of the evidence was that my phone showed that I was in Blackpool at the time of the crime, I'd want my lawyer to point out that the same data shows me in a boat in the Mersey estuary as well as travelling from Euston to Preston via Wales.
posted by Toby Scott at 4/21/2011 08:58:00 AM
