Sono 2 giorni che ne parlano i principali siti e blog di tecnologia, oggi la notizia è stata ripresa dai maggiori quotidiani internazionali, praticamente ci sarebbe questo file, un log sostanzialmente, dove sono registrati tutti gli spostamenti che l'apparecchio ha fatto.
L'articolo che ha lanciato per primo la notizia:
www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed/2011/04/20/apple-secretly-tracking-ipho...
Apple Secretly Tracking iPhone, iPad Users' Location
This is bad. Really bad.
Programmers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden found what could be the biggest privacy breach Apple has ever committed against iPhone 4 and iPad 3G users.
The two men discovered that since the introduction of iOS 4, Apple devices have been tracking and storing the user's location along with a time stamp -- essentially logging a user's movements since upgrading to iOS 4. Bear in mind, this data-logging is done completely in the background and without the user's approval or knowledge.
Breaking the story on O'Reilly, Allan wrote, "We're not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it's clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations."
Worse yet, the data that's being stored is unencrypted and unprotected -- leaving it out in the open on any machine you've synced with your iOS device!!! Switched jobs since syncing your iPhone to your work computer? Met a gal at a bar, went home with her, and transferred an album from her laptop to your iPhone? Guess what: They could easily see where you live, eat, work, visit, etc.
"Anybody with access to this file knows where you've been over the last year, since iOS 4 was released," Allan writes.
Allan and Warden built a program called iPhone Tracker which shows the data being stored and tracks it on a map. Here's an example of the program in action and the data being gathered:
The programmers contacted Apple's Product Security team and have yet to hear back. The company also hasn't publicly addressed this serious issue. In the meantime, Allan and Warden break down the problem and what can be done to patch this gaping security hole.
What information is being recorded?
All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. The coordinates aren't always exact, but they are pretty detailed. There can be tens of thousands of data points in this file, and it appears the collection started with iOS 4, so there's typically around a year's worth of information at this point. Our best guess is that the location is determined by cell-tower triangulation, and the timing of the recording is erratic, with a widely varying frequency of updates that may be triggered by traveling between cells or activity on the phone itself.
What are the implications of this location data?
The cell phone companies have always had this data, but it takes a court order to access it. Now this information is sitting in plain view, unprotected from the world. Beyond this, there is even more data that we have yet to look at in depth.
For example, in my own case I (Alasdair) discovered a list of hundreds of thousands of wireless access points that my iPhone has been in range of during the last year.
How can you look at your own data?
We have built an application that helps you look at your own data. It's available at petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker along with the source code and deeper technical information.
What can you do about this?
As we note around the 20-minute mark in our video discussion, an immediate step you can take is to encrypt your backups through iTunes (click on your device within iTunes and then check "Encrypt iPhone Backup" under the "Options" area).
Articolo del NY Times:
Your iPhone Is Tracking Your Every Move
By AUDREY WATTERS of ReadWriteWeb
Researchers have discovered that the iPhone is keeping track of where you go and storing that information in a file that is stored - unencrypted and unprotected - onto any machine with which you synchronize your phone. It is not clear why Apple is collecting this data.
The discovery of a file called "consolidated.db" was made by data scientists Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, who were initially looking at mobile data and thinking about ways to visualize it. They'll present their findings today at the Where 2.0 conference.
While it is not unusual for cellphones to track users' location, that information is typically kept behind a firewall and it requires a court order for others to be able to access it. This isn't the case with this particular file, raising serious questions about privacy and security.
Tracking Your Coordinates Since iOS4
The file contains longitude and latitude data, recording the phone's coordinates, along with a timestamp. This recording process seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update, which means that there could be almost a year's worth of location data stored - literally hundreds of thousands of data points. While the coordinates aren't always exactly correct, they are incredibly detailed. It appears that the location is determined via cell-tower triangulation, but the timing of these recordings varies.
It isn't clear why Apple is tracking this data, although the possibilities for location-based features are endless - location-based advertising, geofencing apps, and so on. Although the iPhone data is stored on back-up files when the phone is synced to another computer, it doesn't appear that the data is transmitted to Apple. Nevertheless, Apple appears to be unique in this type of tracking, and according to Warden, other phones do not record user's location in the same way; the two researchers have not been able to find comparable tracking systems on Android phones.
Although Google's Latitude, for example, can track your location and lets you give that information to your contacts, it is something you need to opt in to. With the iPhone, you have no such option. There is no way to delete the file, as it will simply be restored, but you can encrypt your iPhone back-ups to make the information somewhat less accessible.
Your Location Data - Unencrypted, Visualized
And that is another crucial part of this problem: in addition to the existence of the tracking mechanism, the information is incredibly accessible. To demonstrate this, Warden and Allan have created a simple downloadable app that will let Apple users check to see what location information has been stored. The app is fascinating, but also pretty frightening as it demonstrates that anyone with access to your phone or to your back-up files will be able to see where you have been since you installed iOS 4 on your phone.
The Guardian cites Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos as saying, "if the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't store the location. And it doesn't need to keep an archive on your machine of where you've been." But rather than ascribing it to any sort of malicious intent he said it's likely a "cockup rather than a conspiracy."
Conspiracy or not, it still doesn't reflect well on Apple's concern over its users' privacy. We have reached out to Apple for comment on this file but we have not heard back at the time of publishing.
Disclosure: Pete Warden is a contributor to ReadWriteWeb.
Tags: apple, privacy
Copyright 2011 ReadWriteWeb. All Rights Reserved.
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