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

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

#91

Post by ugh »

sudonim wrote: post #49

"The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly" A bug _you_ uncovered?

See, that's the kind of mean spirited reading of texts I hate so much. They were made aware of the issue, they looked at the code and (they claim) that it doesn't behave as designed because of a bug. This is them saying "We didn't design the cache to never be purged, that's a bug." Whether you believe that or not is your own problem but that's the whole story, writing "a bug we uncovered" is entirely appropriate in that context.

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

#93

Post by doe88 »

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…

> some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away

Then, I hope that nobody got convicted on the basis of such "accurate" informations...

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

#94

Post by apinstein »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #54
apinstein wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people jumped to the conclusion that Apple was logging your actual location, which would be a big deal, and published it as fact. It's a great story and gets traffic. That said, I cannot imagine that if they'd contacted Apple about the issue they would have gotten a useful answer without the publicity. Bottom line though is that any sufficiently sensational story gets traffic regardless of its truth or lack o…

There were plenty of sensational stories, sure. There were also many reasonable stories that debated what was being tracked, many of which were discussed on HN. You can't invalidate a story because some people become sensationalist, that always happens on any controversial story.

I am sure that lots of people discussed the story; but the original story that kicked it all pitched it as an "Apple is tracking you and the guys in black suits are using it to convict you of crimes" story.

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

#95

Post by mikeryan »

msravi wrote: post #53

1. This explanation seems to ignore the timestamps that are stored along with the hotspots/towers data. What do the timestamps represent? The time when the cache was downloaded onto the phone? 2. Speculatively, the way this seems to work is, that the phone identifies a tower, say, with ID12345. It then looks up the crowdsourced database for the tower with this ID, and queries it for all towers/hotspots within X miles…

This explanation seems to ignore the timestamps that are stored along with the hotspots/towers data. What do the timestamps represent?

As a devils advocate, if I'm a developer writing some sort of logging routine I'm including a timestamp without even thinking about how or why it would be used. Its a logger its supposed to have timestamps ;-)

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

#96

Post by robterrell »

cooldeal wrote: post #47
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #3

3. Why is my iPhone logging my location? 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 This actually makes sense - looking at the logs on my iPhone and iPad, the lo…

>and actually there was a very great deal of places where I've never been, not even close. How does that make sense? It should only cache the locations of cell phone towers it was in the range of. Are you seeing data that was more than 100 miles away from the places you were at?

Ever go up in a tall building? Your phone sees more towers. But actually, we don't know that "towers my phone sees" is the actual mechanism here.

Apple hasn't explained the algorithm they use to determine what location data to send to the phone. Perhaps they're saying "100 miles" because that's what they do -- send tower data for up to 100 miles around the current tower, depending on tower density for that location.

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

#97

Post by techiferous »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #92

"The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location" So, it's logging your rough location...

The intention matters. For example, you could look at my mail client and accuse me of constructing a database of Ruby developers in the Boston area.

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

#98

Post by glenra »

sudonim wrote: post #49

"The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly" A bug _you_ uncovered?

The charitable reading is that regardless of who "discovered" or "reported" the symptoms of the bug, Apple's engineers "uncovered" it in terms of isolating and diagnosing the precise issue at the source level.

(It's also possible - even likely - that Apple already knew about the bug. Apple does quite a lot of QA and every product ever shipped has had known bugs that weren't deemed so important as to postpone release.)

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

#99

Post by robterrell »

tjogin wrote: post #42

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data? Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years. Interesting. Apple generally does not pre-release information about upcoming products, at all. They must have fel…

This was already public knowledge. See this article about Apple dropping Skyhook for its own thing:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/08/04/apple-drops...

"Apple apparently has its own Wi-Fi location information, presumably culled from the daily movements of iPhones around the country, that it thinks is good enough for its own devices."

That sounds exactly like what is described in the press release.

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

#100

Post by sachinag »

techiferous wrote: post #97
dabeeeenster wrote: post #92

"The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location" So, it's logging your rough location...

The intention matters. For example, you could look at my mail client and accuse me of constructing a database of Ruby developers in the Boston area.

Heh, that'd probably be worth in the neighborhood of $500K given how many openings there are for Rubyists in the Boston/Cambridge area.
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