"The unlimited size of Apple's cache is probably just a mistake."
I think this is what concerns people most. This "mistake" has your triangulated location based on cell towers tracked for years and years, across multiple devices, when there really is no recognizable need to store/cache this much location data for this long. It seems, judging by the above linked source-code, that Android has it right on this one.
Which is helpful for me since I've long suspected AT&T has a dearth of towers in my section of the UES, maybe I can get a microcell out of this, haha.
http://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-...
Also iOS no longer uses Skyhook as of iOS 3.2. Plus Skyhook is for Wifi access point location data, not cell-tower location data. Apple uses its own database for that now which you consent to update with your location data. http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002145.html
If they are using CoreData as the storage engine, it is possible they changed backends without ever looking at what was stored in it.
Looking at it now I guess it can be seen as misleading. It wasn't my intention though.
edit: changed the title ..
"OMG APPLE TRACKS US!!" thing going on is overblown
If a device tells you that it is tracking you; eventually giving you the possibility of opting out, deleting all tracks of you on request, then it's fine by me. But otherwise it isn't, and this practice should really stop.
And here I was a couple of months ago, thinking about how cool / evil would be to make an app that tracks someone's route for spying purposes (like your girlfriend for example). Apparently iPhones give it away for free, no extra work required ;-)
Phones with GPS incorporated can be mindbogglingly evil -- just think about the costs involved in hiring a private eye to track the daily route of someone, day after day, for a whole month. People don't do it because of the costs involved and because an incompetent can blow away his cover.
iPhones are equipped with GPS, and that data is there, waiting for you to retrieve it. You don't have to do anything special about it -- you just have to gain access to that iPhone somehow.
I'm not accusing Apple of anything, I really think it was just a minor slip-up on their part. But these things are dangerous ;)
The only records I have for example are from when I explicitly had Google Maps open, no other program on my iPhone has my permission to use the location based services, and as such it didn't track where I was going at all.
The location controls do not affect it at all.
If this was being tracked even when using non-location services wouldn't that be updated every time I pass by a new cell tower? Wouldn't it know about the trip I made with a co-worker to a town I've never been to before?
Can you point me where in the tables there is data (based on timestamps) that is updated more often and kept around?
It would make sense to store this information on a server, so why aren't they? Is it a mistake, or are there laws that preclude this? Maybe it's track now, figure out what to do with it later. The data is extremely valuable.