On
Star Wars Day, May the 4th be with you, Apple released iOS version 4.3.3 which, among other things, resolves a tracking bug which has given
them a bit of a black eye in the press and blogosphere.
In case you have been under and iRock lately, you probably heard of Peter Warden and Alasdair Allen. They are the
two hacks that found a fun little file called consolidated.db that apparently has been tracking iPhone and 3G iPad users
since iOS4 came out.
Now before you all get your panties into a twist, least we forget we are a nation, no, a world of people
who love to give away our location. FourSquare checkins, GetGlue stickers, Twitter tweets, FaceBook posts, we just cant
get our share on fast enough. But that is a rant for another day. The thing is, because of directions within
mapping software, weather data, etc...we do divulge a certain level of location data about ourselves out of
necessary evil. That being said...there is no reason the device should hold onto this data for years, let alone more
that say...a day?
A quick notion that struck me is that perhaps Apple is using this information in order to determine where their
carrier partners, AT&T and T-Mobile, need to enhance their network capabilites. But again, there is no reason to store
this data on the device...nor to keep the file backed up.
For those truly paranoid about it, the 4.3.3 update decreases the size of the file so it cannont store years of data, plus
it stops the file from being backed up. In addition, Apple has stated that if you
disable location based services on your device, it will actually delete all
data in the file.
All in all a stupid move on Apples part. It was only a matter of time until this "mistake" was found, and
it is only a matter of time before another hidden "mistake" is discovered.
- Scott