You've been secretly iTracked!

Not true. You can completely eliminate Location Services on the phone - Location Services has nothing to do with cell towers being able to locate you. If you place a call to 911 from a cell phone, it's not the phone that provides the initial location (although with Location Services it can provide a more accurate location) - it's software sitting on the cell towers themselves.

In fact, this file is never read or transmitted anywhere. Cell towers don't download it, and applications on the phone don't have direct access to it either. Seriously... grab the app that shows it all from your backups, and then turn off Location Services on your phone for a couple of weeks... you'll see that you don't have any new data points after that.

 

You are nit picking. You use Location Services with capitals, while Trebuchet is using location services with lower case to generically mean locating a cell phone. GPS in the cell phone certainly works for locating, but there are other methods. Cell tower triangulation is a common method which works well, but lacks the resolution of GPS. A third method uses maps of known WiFi hotspots -- it sounds crazy, but works well in metropolitan areas which contain a high density of hotspots.

GPS and WiFi are done by the phone, and the location data may be kept private. Cell tower triangulation is entirely out of your control. If your cell phone is on, it will be tracked by the network. The cell network needs to know where you are in order to route calls to your phone. It doesn't need to save this data, but it can, and it's entirely out of your control. If you want to keep your travels private, don't carry a cell phone.

Tom

 

Or buy something with anything but cash, or cross any borders, or buy any plane, bus, or train tickets, or drive a car with GPS...even then, if you're on the wanted list, you can only hide for so long.

 

The town I live in has that system. Their justification is that it's used to find stolen cars, parole violators and other wanted people. The local article I read said there are parole violators and wanted people dumb enough to drive around in their own cars. I also have no problem with it being used to find stolen cars and people with arrest warrants against them. I also don't have great deal of faith that it won't be abused.

 

I didn't even bother reading the above until I stumbled across Apple New Secret Tracking File Neither New Nor Secret - Tech Europe - WSJ which links to it.

 

Yes, but that's available for every cell phone... and has been since cell phones were invented! Trebuchet's demand to opt out of that and for an explanation for that portion is so far beyond anything reasonable that I didn't even realize that's what he was talking about. For the purposes of this thread, I was under the impression we were talking about the logging file with location information on it on the iPhone... not other common practices that apply to even the most basic cell phones you can find.

 

So what's the implication of secret iTracking; no electronics of any kind, wear a disguise, no credit/debit, no accounts, no cash bills larger than $5, no social contacts, no talking...yadda, yadda?

Or an alternative of track me, find me, access me, photo me, bill me, charge me, record me, etc..

Maybe a compromise of the two extremes such as constraints over tracking and marketing and controls over who and how the information is used? But then this is more government control and manipulation isn't it?

 

Absolutely not. It's corporate. Nothing to do with government. All this fear-mongering-evil-government BS only gives companies more power.

 

And that's my point exactly. Corporations if left to their own morality will never do what's right for the individual which means an open invitation for government to step in and attempt to legislate. My examples are the break up of the Bells, new reporting/lending controls over financial institutions, or something more electronically related such as wire-tapping laws to control law enforcement.

 

...and it looks like if you're in (or passed by) the wrong place at the wrong time, you're going to get iArrested! Which can be followed by getting your life iDestroyed!

Police Using Apple iOS Tracking Data For Forensics - Slashdot

 

Thier whole thing reminds me of the iPhone antenna problems. First the fanbois and apple denied their was a problem, then the problem was the fault of the way people held their phones.

The real problem isn't the tracking, the problem is that Apple buried that fact that they were doing keeping tracking data in a contract that maybe 1% of buyers actually read.

Now the apologists are dancing around the issue by saying 911 responders need to know where you are. That's true, but they don't need to know where you were yesterday or last week.

You could put an Apple Logo on a road apple, call it a nutritious snack and the fanbois would gobble them up like they were a fine treat.:cheer2:

 

It's both funny and sad seeing so many defenders of our already porous privacy get their collective panties in such a wad over a tech industry story that was barely business news nearly a year ago. :deadhorse:

Apple collecting, sharing iPhone users' precise locations [Updated] | Technology | Los Angeles Times

 

if you're willing to upload your tracking file for points and potentially money

If you haven't updated your iPhone to iOS 4.3.3 yet and you're willing to upload your cache...err.. pseudo-tracking file , you can get Navizon points which could potentially translate into money.

See my post at http://priuschat.com/forums/freds-h...points-cell-towers-w-navizon.html#post1321779.

10,000 points gets you $15 now per Navizon rewards - Earn money with Navizon running with a GPS device. I'm at 124604 points, but their payout used to be lower.

If you decide to war drive or take advantage of the above tool, I'd really appreciate it if you use my referral link to sign up for an account.