{"id":2908,"date":"2011-04-24T15:01:54","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T05:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelwyres.com\/?p=2908"},"modified":"2011-04-24T15:01:54","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T05:01:54","slug":"iphone-tracking-data-how-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/2011\/04\/iphone-tracking-data-how-dangerous\/","title":{"rendered":"iPhone Tracking Data – How Dangerous?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of to-and-fro -(particularly in the tech industry) – over the last week or so in regards to whether or not Apple’s tracking of iPhone locations<\/a> is a good or a bad thing.<\/p>\n

Many commentators have landed on the “it is bad” side of the argument. Many have landed on the “it is not bad” side. Some have landed somewhere in between, and I have to admit after looking that the location data my iPhone has been collecting, I’m one of the people in the middle ground.<\/p>\n

I don’t think it is “bad”, and from what I’ve seen in relation to my iPhone, the data is certainly ambiguous and open to interpretation. Below is a heat map of all locations retreived from my phone about an hour ago:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Certainly, a reasonably accurate picture of pretty much everywhere I’ve been over recent months. But how “accurate” is “reasonably accurate?”.<\/p>\n

About a week and a half ago, I travelled the Hume Freeway<\/a> to Albury<\/a>-Wodonga<\/a> for work purposes. Low and behold, here is the heat map for the day of travel in respect to that trip:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here’s why I’m not too worried about it.<\/p>\n

Firstly, the date of travel was April 14th, yet this data is listed as April 13th. This might be accountable to the data potentially being stored in GMT\/UTC time, but straight away some doubt starts to hover over the data.<\/p>\n

Secondly, while the data seems pretty convinced – (correctly) – that I was in the Albury-Wodonga area – (in the top right of the map) – it also seems pretty convinced that I was in Bendigo<\/a>, surrounded by the clump on the upper left of the map.<\/p>\n

It has been many years – (possibly even 20 or more) – since I have been to Bendigo, and certainly not since I’ve owned an iPhone – let alone one with version 4.x.x of iOS – (the version purported to be the only one doing this tracking) – installed.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, my journey started and ended that day in Geelong<\/a> – (lower area of the map, left of centre) – yet there is no data for Geelong whatsoever. Even if the data was stored in GMT\/UTC, at least one end of the journey should have appeared on the map.<\/p>\n

But no.<\/p>\n

So the way I look at it is, if this data was brought up before a court of law for any purpose – was I in Geelong? Was I in Bendigo? Was I in Albury-Wodonga?<\/p>\n

The answers should be “yes”, “no”, and “yes”, but the data on my phone suggests “no”, “yes”, and “yes”.<\/p>\n

Apple does need to explain the existence of the data, but I think that’s enough doubt about the data for me. I’ll be watching next time I do a long trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of to-and-fro -(particularly in the tech industry) – over the last week or so in regards to whether or not Apple’s tracking of iPhone locations is a good or a bad thing. Many commentators have landed on the “it is bad” side of the argument. Many have landed on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[297,437,475],"class_list":["post-2908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-iphone","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}