Secret iPhone file keeps track of everywhere you go and when you go there (Ruh-roh)

Will Brinson

Screen shot 2011 04 20 at 11.42.06 AM 309x185 Secret iPhone file keeps track of everywhere you go and when you go there (Ruh roh)Sometimes when I’m driving down the road and watching the little blue dot on my iPhone prance right along the Maps application, I’ll randomly look back up at the road and think to myself, “Man, Apple knows everything about me.”

It’s true — Apple knows what we search for, know where we travel, know what we’re downloading, etc., etc. — they just don’t bother to save all that data and keep it stored on a phone.

Oh wait, what’s that, they do? Well, crap.

Yup, turns out that a secret file in the iPhone has been keeping track of your movements since June of 2010 by tracking latitude and longitude and a timestamp.

“Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you’ve been,” said Pete Warden, one of the researchers who discovered the file.

For dudes like me — no secrets, always being tracked by paparazzi anyway — this isn’t that big a deal. But for you, sir, the common man? This is a huge problem.

Remember when you told your wife that you were working late at the office for a call that started at 7:00 PM? (Ignore the part about her actually believing that — the point is you were at a bar.) Yeah, cover, meet blown.

Or how about the time that you forgot to pick your kid up from preschool, forcing them to walk three miles in the snow and then bribed them with an Xbox game to not tell mom only to have frostbite set in and force an upping of the ante when it comes to paying a small child off? Yeah, you’re nailed.

Or, if you prefer a realistic scenario that could actually mess up your life … let’s say you’re applying for a new job and traveling around with your current office-distributed iPhone. You probably don’t want your current employer knowing that you’re looking for a new job. But they could, if they owned your iPhone (in theory).

This, by the way, would have TOTALLY screwed Newman in “Jurassic Park” when he was stealing raptor embryos and trying to sell them to another company. No way the old dude with the cane would have not downloaded his info from his iPhone. And now we’d all have an awesome island with tons of dinosaurs.

But I digress — there are probably many more realistic scenarios in which this is a total nightmare, and the point remains: someone can access where you’ve been doing the things you do, which means they can probably discern what the things are that you do.

And the dudes who figured this out have made it really easy for someone to access the file — you can try it yourself by checking out Warden’s program for downloading the information from your own iPhone.

For now, the bigger question is this: “WHY?” Why the f— are you tracking everyone who owns an iPhone, Apple? And what the hell are those black helicopters doing outside my window?

No, but seriously, Steve Jobs: we’d like to know what’s going on please.

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