[4eyes] Apple harvesting deployed iPhones to collect "volunteered" geographic information

[Tobias Hollerer]

I've been wondering why localization on iPhones works
quite well indoors. I always knew that they were using
signal strength from WiFi base stations and cell towers
to determine location. But how to keep this information
up-to-date? I so far thought that they had to rely on
external services that map these data continuously. It is well
known, that, e.g. the Google StreetView cars measure such
communications footprints together with their accurate
localization. And it turns out that indeed Apple has been using
Google/Skyhook databases for this purpose.

Now we know (what I should have suspected, but couldn't
bring myself to believe), that they are indeed constantly
recording such data from any iphone/ipod/ipad in use, together
with GPS information, if available. They incorporated an allusion to
this into their privacy policy on June 21 to make sure it's OK
to do this, but they have apparently been doing this since
January 2008.

Since April 2010 they are now using their own localization
databases on all Apple devices with newer OS's.

Apples detailed letter in response to two congressmen's inquiry
is attached. (also reprinted at
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20010948-260.html)

This could simply be a classic example of making the next
user's experience better by harvesting log information from the
current user.

I'm all for that, but I do feel ambivalent about one of their
main motivations being better location-specific
advertisement (iAd Network). :-S

Cheers,

	Tobias



-- 
Tobias Hollerer
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5110

holl at cs.ucsb.edu, Office: (805)284-9395, Fax: (805)893-8553
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