Apple Patent Reveals Extensive Stalking Plans

The spying iPhone is no chance event . A recent Apple patent coating reveals that the location - cut through dossiers accumulated in iPhones are to be used in apps from Apple and any number of other ship’s company .

Ronald Huang , an Applesenior technology manager , filed patent lotion 12/553,554 last month , “ Location history for emplacement aware devices , ” which explain how Apple can amass and use emplacement data in the very ways Apple critics fear . The patent covering , for example , envisions a searchable map plotting the owner ’s location story ; tying location to financial transaction ; transmitting locating data over the internet to remote server ; and many other exercise .

Apple has been enmeshed in arguing since computerresearchers discover last monththat the iPhone stores indefinitely data about its whereabouts gleaned from cadre phone towers and wifi access decimal point . The data collection start with the release of Io 4 last June . The iPhone puts the fix data point in an easily read file call “ consolidated.db , ” which is apparently never pruned for old entries .

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Privacy advocates , political leader and the military press have aloud raised business concern about how this all-embracing account of personal movements is pass to be used . Senator Al Franken and Rep. Ed Markey , for example , both wrote letter to Apple postulate to know why the localisation dossier are being created , and today the Illinois lawyer generalfollowed suit . The information is also collected even if the iPhone ’s “ emplacement service ” preference is gear up to “ off,”the Wall Street Journal reported this morning .

Apple has n’t officially comment on why iPhones are compiling such a long account of information on their proprietor movements . But it does seem to be trying to quell the argument . Apple CEO Steve Jobsrecently sent an emailto a interested customer , writing , “ We do n’t track anyone . The information circulating around is false . ” Apple has also done nothing to dispute a widely read write up thata package bug is the probable understanding so much data has been compiled on iPhones . And someone or something prompted the Journal to write anarticleearlier this calendar month saying that Google ’s competing Android phones engage in similar behavior .

But Apple ’s patent coating makes it seem extremely unconvincing the location gathering is due to a bug . Indeed , the company delineate big plans for the troves of data it has quietly create . Apple includes an illustration of a mapping app forebode simply “ localization History ” which very much resembles the “ iPhone Tracker ” software expressly plan toraise dismay bellsabout all the data being amass ( see figure 3A and 3B in the PDF engraft below , page 4 - 5 ) . The patent of invention also import out how the fix database could be “ correlated or colligate ” to other personal information , including “ but not confine to : datum associated with a picture taking event , datum associated with a financial dealing , sensor output data point , data colligate with a communicating event ( e.g. receipt of a phone call or instant content ) , data associate with a internet event … . etc . ” ( sections 0020 and 0021 , on page 9 in the PDF below ) .

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Apple also state several time that the collected information will be transmit to remote server , include in section 0018 , which discusses a “ remote reference database , ” and section 0035 , which discusses sharing location data with other wireless devices “ or with a distant service ( e.g. , piloting table service ) . ” Apple has say before that such datum is only partake in with express drug user consent , although it clearly caught customers by surprisal with the digest of the iPhone localization database .

The patent do it clear that Apple has been planning an extensive , rather than a very limited , location database . One section , 0032 , even spells out using datum compression to reduce the amount of storage needed to store repeated visits to the same location . Elsewhere in the patent lotion , for example in section 0004 , Apple describes the possibility of handle the size and “ freshness ” of the database by pruning older entranceway . This is listed as a possibility “ in some implementations ” but no hard , specific pileus on datum collecting is ever suggested .

clear , Apple sees big potential drop in exploiting the iPhone ’s power to record our every move . Now it just needs to explicate to its users how far this pattern will be have , and how much consent it will seek before building up movement dossier and before using them in its own software . Its track record on revealing thus far is not encouraging .

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