Monday, April 25, 2011

Apple 3G iPhone and iPad Automatic User Location Recording

Based on research reports conducted by the O'Reilly Radar recently, Apple is believed to have recorded the position of the iPhone and iPad 3G handset since the release of IOS 4 in July 2010. This device is known to have stored the position of the device in a hidden file called "consolidated.db" which meant to record the latitude and longitude coordinates plus the time when in this position.


At first thought this incident was the fault of Apple that is not accidental but later this argument was refuted because the iTunes store a copy of this data into the backup made. Thus when someone returns the data stored as a backup in iTunes then this data will remain stored.

Apple's data is stored inside the device without encryption so that could jeopardize the privacy and security of its users. Other people who know the location of the file can check and find out where all the users of this device on the move. The data stored in this one year time frame so that it can be seen the activity of a person in a year. In addition to recording the wireless access, these devices also record the cellular tower and GPS.


Fortunately there is one way to protect users or iPad 3G iPhone by performing the encryption (encryption) of data file backups via iTunes. Users simply check the option 'Encrypt the iPhone backup' which is displayed from the Options menu.

To see how the image of a user's iPhone or 3G iPad activities or travel, O'Reilly has made an application that lets users see the data they have and displays them on the map. The application is called iPhoneTracker and can be downloaded from.
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