In the last week, one of the bigger news hitting the Net - and I was not talking about the 1Malaysia email - was the unveiling that iPhone has been secretly recording its geolocation on the go without the user's knowledge or consent. Talk about breach of privacy.
Studying the news further, I decided to download the said software and try it for myself. And it was surprisingly easy.
First of all, head to this link. Load the software - appropriately named iPhone tracker - on the machine where the iPhone or iPad was synched. On loading, the program would search for the hidden geolocation data file and read them up. Within a few seconds, without even needing me to point the software to any target, I was presented with a map representation of the data.
I have been in JB, Langkawi and KB since I used the iPhone unit according to the program. And they were right.
Before you go all upset about the whole thing, I must point out that you must have your unit synched on the Mac for the data to be read. The program, as far as I can tell can only be run on a Mac - but I need to confirm this though. One can only read the data on the computer, so there was no chance for the data to be accessed remotely.
However, this did not explain the need for the data to be kept in the first place. One wonders who would have access to the data as I was sure, the data could be uploaded to a net server should Apple wished to do so. And when that happened, there would be no telling what it would be used for. It can be as benign as being used for targeted advertising. Or worst still can be used to profile the user as terrorist or to be uses retrospectively in the court of law. What ever it was, the fact that it was taken without consent would certainly tarnish Apple's image no doubt.
