Why should you care about iOS location tracking?

Xeni Jardin 5:04 pm Tue Apr 26, 2011

Screen-shot-2011-04-20-at-9.27.jpg

Over at Wired Gadget Lab, Brian Chen and Mike Isaac have a thoughtful, non-hysterical piece up about the Apple iOS location data gathering issue.

You should care about Apple's collection of geodata on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices, because the method is flawed.

To be clear, "care" doesn't mean you should smash your iPhone with a hammer, rip out the GPS chip and gulp it down your throat. This isn't an issue of "Big Brother is watching."

It's just a matter of a security flaw that puts your location data at risk if it gets in the wrong hands — not an immediate concern, but a concern nonetheless.

Image: "An unencrypted file stored in iPhones and iPads records a user's location data. An open source application was used to plot the location data from an iPhone belonging to a Wired.com reporter."

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