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Technology Travel

Apple is Tracking Me!

Bay Area Tracking
Zooming in on my iPad’s location data produced the pattern at the left. From this I discern that exact locations aren’t known but general locations are tracked. No harm in that!

If my mother is concerned that Apples iPhone tracks peoples movements then I know Apple has an issue. We all now know that Apple wasn’t tracking us but retaining radio towers position data to speed up location services on their devices. They did keep too much data and which will be reduced. They did keep data in readable form and that will be encrypted. However, before Apple made these changes I wanted to take a peek at MY data.

An iPhone and an iPad are my constant traveling companions. Where I go, they go. Where we are, they gather radio position data. I wondered how much data, what it revealed, what I could do with it and more so not being a coder I sought out a third party utility to reveal the data. iPhoneTracker is the app I used. What it found was three months worth of data covering my travels from 3 January to 6 April.

The primary feature of iPhoneTracker is plotting data on a map. The first picture below is all three months of data shown at one time. The second is zoomed into the San Francisco bay area. I expect youll agree that both of these provide intriguing insights into my travels.

iPhone Tracker Map

iPhone Tracker Map

Another feature is playing the data which reveals the data over time.

One last thought about being tracked. As you can see at the top of the page, when you zoom in enough you can see that the data is averaged into a matrix. This means the data points that my iPhone or iPad gather are never exactly where I am so even if the data were tied to me, even if someone tried to learn exactly where I was, it wouldnt be possible.

Apple was correct but thats never enough if people believe differently.

Theyre doing the right thing to reduce data and encrypt it.

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By TravisGood

Speaker. Maker. Writer. Traveler. Father. Husband.

MakerCon Co-Chair (MakerCon.com)
Maker City San Diego Roundtable Member
San Diego Maker Faire Producer (SDMakerFaire.org)

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