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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

On your iPhone you can go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Significant Locations and you will see that Apple does keep track of at least some of your location history and tries to analyze it if you don't actively turn it off.

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On my iPhone running iOS 13, I had to go a level deeper to find that: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Significant Locations.

To view Significant Locations, I have to provide my Touch ID again. Also, the fine print says "Significant Locations are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be read by Apple." Text repeated in "Location Services & Privacy"[0].

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056

Is there any negative consequences to turning that off? What are those locations used for?

If you click on the link in the post you respond to, it explains what the locations are used for.

Thanks, but that's not very specific.

> It is used to provide you with personalized services, such as predictive traffic routing, and to build better Memories in Photos.

> you will see that Apple does keep track of at least some of your location history

That's not Apple keeping the data, that's your phone keeping the data. And that data isn't accessible to Apple - only you and your device.

From page 6 of https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_P...

"This data is not shared with third parties, is fully encrypted, and can’t be read by Apple."

That claim is worthless when the software is closed source. It's impossible to verify.

Actually the claim is worth a big payday if you can prove Apple lied. One leak of customer data and Apple is screwed.

>One leak of customer data and Apple is screwed.

Yes, the Equifax incident really showed us how data leaks ruin companies.

Claims aren't worthless, they'd be breaking the law if they lied. Apple has a pretty decent incentive to not break the law (PR mostly, but also fines), so I would bet they're telling the truth here.

And as we all know, and history shows, those incentives ensure corporations never break the law.

If security researchers couldn't audit closed source software they would be pretty rubbish at their jobs. It's a lot easier to audit open source of course, but researchers do reverse engineer closed source stuff all the time.

Well you can always look at the network packets, most easily accomplished from jailbroken devices. There are many people who look at such matters. It's far from worthless.

Can't Apple push silent code updates to specific phones? That would mean they can access that data whenever they choose to. Even if they don't do it right now, they retain that ability.

Not true. The iOS location history is encrypted and stored in your iCloud account with a key that never leaves your device. So it's quite different from Google's Location History: Apple stores it, but they cannot read it.

And if you disable iCloud, the data remains exclusively on your device.

That iCloud key only prevents man in the middle attacks. You can still use the key to decrypt the data at rest in the cloud servers, and Apple stores both.

And if you're in China, Apple stores both on Chinese government owned servers: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/5-things-you-...

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