Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 159 posts

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#121

Post by jrockway »

sounddust wrote: post #16

I often travel internationally (with no data roaming) and I've noticed that the iPhone's A-GPS is incapable of determining my location when I arrive in a new place, even if I've pre-loaded my route/maps in the maps application prior to arrival. But once I've connected to the internet - even for a few seconds - my phone is permanently able to track itself in that city, even after I've left and returned months later. I…

Do you need to use AGPS? It only takes 12 minutes to download the ephemeris and almanac via the GPS satellite itself. So even without Internet connectivity, you'll eventually know where you are.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#122

Post by schrototo »

biafra wrote: post #106
schrototo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, although an opt-out option might seem a reasonable request, Apple has to draw a line somewhere. If you want to have fast and accurate positioning, you have to provide them with your anonymous tracking data. That's the tradeoff, which I think is also reasonable to most people. (I wish Apple would take that same stance with regard to crash logs. If you want stuff from the App Store, you have to let iTunes send your…

"If you want to have fast and accurate positioning, you have to provide them with your anonymous tracking data." No I don't have to. I am currently working on an offline positioning system based on a (hopefully complete) dataset of all GSM-Cells in the world ( http://myapp.fr/cellsIdData/ ). The sqlite3-database is currently 25MB big with some room for optimization. I do this for Android but the iPhone also has enoug…

I should've been clearer: I didn't mean "have to" in the sense of "strictly technically necessary" but more along the lines of "if you want to use this functionality, you'll have to help us out by collecting the data that'll make it work better for everyone".

Whether or not the collected data really makes the positioning that much better, I don't know, but Apple apparently seems to think it does.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#123

Post by revscat »

brudgers wrote: post #105
executive wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, short of magic, there is no way to send a relevant subset of the crowd sourced data to an iPhone without first knowing both the location of the iPhone and its unique identity. If you consider recording the id of the cell tower the phone is connected to magic..

If Apple can do so without tracking the location of the iPhone and knowing its identity, yes. But then the scenario you propose admits that Apple tracks the location of the iPhone to some degree. The most charitable case would be that Apple only tracks location based on the cell tower to which the iPhone is connected. The worst case is that it tracks location based on every hotspot and celltower the iPhone sees. Sinc…

The device ID is not necessary for such a query to be successful, though. If you as the device programmer were interested in getting the subset of the cache for your location, the method signature would need be nothing more complicated than:

  +(DBConsolidated) subsetForDevice:(NSArray *)visibleTowers:(NSArray *)visibleHotSpots
So even in the "worst" case described by you no identifying data is sent. This could possibly be statistically analyzed, but given Apple's flat denials, a plausible technical reason, and the public attention this has received, I doubt they are lying here. A whistleblower providing evidence contradicting their "we don't track" claims would be devastating, and possibly open them up to legal action. I don't think they are quite that careless, although it is certainly possible.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#124

Post by lukeschlather »

jmreid wrote: post #103
lukeschlather wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Calling it "tracking data" is wrong, even. I wish people would stop saying this. Of course it's tracking data. There's nothing wrong with that. One of the phone's features is tracking your location so you don't get lost. Personally I think Apple has overreacted. They just need to provide a configuration setting for the size of the cache, and more importantly not include it in backups. A cache is not important enough…

You could also call the IP address that you're sending email from 'tracking data' if you wanted. Hell, I get a text message from Rogers the second I land in the US to let me know that roaming rates apply. The fact that I have a device that has to talk to another end point means that I can be tracked.

Yes, I would call that tracking data. But unlike IP address headers, this cache contains information that is by design displayed to the user to help track their location.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#125

Post by alanfalcon »

lukeschlather wrote: post #119
sigzero wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a different tablet.

Locked-down bootloaders are the norm in the high-end tablet space, because Apple set the trend. Yes, there are a handful of freely modifiable ones, but I don't want my hardware choices constrained to those vendors which deign to let me use the hardware I've purchased as I please.

Yes you do.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#126

Post by rbarooah »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #82

The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data? No. This data is sent to Apple in an ano…

Frankly this is doublespeak very similar to the kind used to manufacture this hysteria in the firstplace - the data you're talking about is on your phone Apple doesn't have it, therefore Apple is not tracking you.

Your email is on your phone. Does this mean that Apple has your email? Clearly not, or perhaps we should have 'emailgate' and prevent phones from downloading emails more than 7 days old.

Apple was never keeping a list of your whereabouts.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#127

Post by rbarooah »

cooldeal wrote: post #33
foobarbazetc wrote: post #20

Oh no, reasonable and accurate information. Plus a list of things they plan to do to fix it. What will we all hate on Apple about next?

So you think the people who were reporting on these issues and caused Apple to fix them did it to hate on Apple? Tthe issues were real and not made up because Apple is now fixing them. Would they have fixed it if every reporter acted like Gruber? Why do some people take it as a personal insult if people point out that Apple can ship buggy software?

The people who were reporting these issues made false claims and presented them in the most alarmist and damaging way possible to Apple. They did this without data to support them and continued to make insinuations not supported by the facts even when other researchers showed their claims to be unsupported.

It's certainly reasonable to question their motives.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#128

Post by epistasis »

smackfu wrote: post #86
Anechoic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which wouldn't have been patched had the story not been uncovered That's a pretty cynical reaction. Why would you make that assumption? Do you think that if someone had alerted Apple privately to the bug they never would have gotten around to fixing it?

Because apparently this cache was well known already to researchers, and it was just the user-friendly interface that blew it up in the press.

What makes you think forensics researchers would report this to Apple as a bug? To them it's a feature.

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#129

Post by rbarooah »

lukeschlather wrote: post #119
sigzero wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a different tablet.

Locked-down bootloaders are the norm in the high-end tablet space, because Apple set the trend. Yes, there are a handful of freely modifiable ones, but I don't want my hardware choices constrained to those vendors which deign to let me use the hardware I've purchased as I please.

So you want Apple to fail because you don't like what the other manufacturers are doing?

Re: Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

#130

Post by sounddust »

jrockway wrote: post #121
sounddust wrote: post #16

I often travel internationally (with no data roaming) and I've noticed that the iPhone's A-GPS is incapable of determining my location when I arrive in a new place, even if I've pre-loaded my route/maps in the maps application prior to arrival. But once I've connected to the internet - even for a few seconds - my phone is permanently able to track itself in that city, even after I've left and returned months later. I…

Do you need to use AGPS? It only takes 12 minutes to download the ephemeris and almanac via the GPS satellite itself. So even without Internet connectivity, you'll eventually know where you are.

As far as I can tell, the iPhone cannot determine one's location solely from the GPS antenna. If you travel to a place where you haven't been before, location services simply won't work until you obtain internet connectivity for a few seconds.

I don't know if this is because the iPhone's GPS functionality is crippled, or if it's a software limitation. I'd imagine that if you wanted to overcome this limitation, you'd need to jailbreak your phone and use 3rd party mapping software at a minimum.

*Note: once it has located you, it will generally track you correctly while you're moving, even if you leave the area where you had internet connectivity.

Post reply on HN