Kuco – they made it free earlier in the year – but only to iPhone 4 users

Rachel

From reports I’ve read the location data is once every couple of days and is wildly innaccurate as it is just based on cell towers, so “being nicked retrospectively for speeding” isn’t exactly realistic – even if it was admissible, the police could get a search warrant and spare the time of the computer forensics team!

Ah right.

Kuco – they made it free earlier in the year – but only to iPhone 4 users
Rachel

Actually it is effectively free as long as you just know someone with an iPhone 4 to activate it. My wife’s 3GS is registered to the same Find My iPhone as my iPhone 4.

cool, so how do I extract the data?

jam bo – Member

cool, so how do I extract the data?

There’s an app for that!

the police used my aunts mobile to trace her when she tried to kill herself once -after she’d rung my uncle to tell him what she was up to but not where she was

they found her in time

and told my uncle to make sure she had her phone on at all times otherwise they couldnt find her again

as regards the iphone thing reminds me of a scifi book by frank herbert- the name escapes me about a coproration that sold ubiquitous random items each one with a secret monitoring devices in them that allows the owner of the corporation to spy on and blackmail everyone in the world using miniature wormholes iirc

allthegear, thanks for pointing that out, now set up 🙂

You see no issues with this?

None at all, I don’t have an iPhone, I think it’s bloody hilarious.

A program called “itwin” can be used to decipher theses files. Strangley only available on pc,

Funny, in the five seconds I spent looking at the app, it appeared to be Mac only. Could be wrong though, I didn’t care sufficiently to explore further.

In seriousness, the reason I posted the tinfoil hat link (apart from finding it funny in and of itself) is,

This is using triangulation data from the cell towers, yes? It’s not GPS data. So it’s a big furore over data which your telecoms provider already has anyway, and has had for years. So the big fuss is, what, that your phone and your PC knows where you’ve been? Big fat hairy deal.

Sure, it’s got privacy issues if, say, you’re cheating on your wife and she decides to check on you. But frankly, if that’s your situation then you’ve got bigger concerns.

Or, lets say your PC (Mac, whatever) gets compromised and a remote hacker in Russia or China or somewhere gains access to your coarse location history. How, exactly, are they going to use that data maliciously? They can’t even tell that you’ve been to McDonald’s and grass you up to your dietician, unless you happened to go to one in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales.

Suspect it isn’t just the Iphone that does this, but is probably a very easy target to get at…probably shortly will follow something similar with Android and Window-devices…

its probably more of a worry if the tabloids want to track you

The iPhone is an easy target compared to Android and WinPhone? Good gravy, don’t let any iPhone owners hear you say that.

Anyone got a PC app and know where the log file is stored on a PC? I’m curious…

Easy target due to popularity…

‘s not the most popular platform, far as I can see.

Cougar, Market share is irrelevant, it’s profit that counts, and Apple make more money on the iPhone because it’s their phone and their OS. Android is a free OS spread across a whole bunch of different phone manufacturers, and Symbian may sell more units, but most Nokia ‘smartphones’ are more basic and cheaper than the iPhone, which is why Nokia has been going down the crapper profit-wise and have now dumped Symbian in favour of WinPhone 7 in the desperate hope they might start making some money. Android doesn’t make money, only the advertising Google sell through it makes money for Google.

So who’s run Pete Warden’s tracker? My data shows a fairly good general overview of my national movements over the last few weeks – like trips to Glentress and up the coast towards Berwick – but it puts me in so many places that I’ve never been in my life (like Yorkshire’s Kirby Stephen!!) that really, as a means of accurate and specific tracking, it’s about as much use as a singlespeed 29er. I’ve also not been further into Scotland with my ‘phone than Glentress, so what all the data just south of Edinburgh and in Glasgow relates to I do not know.

I’d rather that this information was not collected/stored, and certainly not without my explicit consent, but in all honesty I think it’s being blown out of proportion. The detail of the more localised maps is actually quite funny. It could appear to be an indication of the frequency at which specific network masts have detected my ‘phone and with what kind of signal strength; but even then, I’m showing ‘hot’ in places I know for a fact I’ve never been even close to with my ‘phone. The localised view actually gives a very, very poor indication of my movements and the frequency of my visits to particular areas.

The tracker app visualises the locations with reduced detail and only rough timings.

Apparently the data stored in the iPhone, or synced to iTunes, is more precise.

….for those with JB’d iPhones:

*heads to Cydia*

Kuco – they made it free earlier in the year – but only to iPhone 4 users

They made the Find my iPhone app free, but you do still need to sign up for a Mobile Me account to actually use the app to do anything, and that isn’t free.

They made the Find my iPhone app free, but you do still need to sign up for a Mobile Me account to actually use the app to do anything, and that isn’t free.

Yes it is. I know because I’ve done it.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/find-my-iphone-setup/

http://lifehacker.com/5696311/how-to-enable-and-use-find-my-iphone-for-free-on-iphone-3gs-and-other-pre+2010-devices

All I wanted was the find my phone incase I lost it or it’s stolen. Signed up last night to it.

I talked about this with a student about ten years ago. The reply was that the phone was located by two towers, not three. The operator would send a signal every hour, remember the interference on the TV each hour? If anyone, the police, wanted to get a more accurate fix on location they needed approval from the court.

Assuming you don’t have GPS enabled on the phone then location estimates are not too great. With only 2 towers in GSM/GPRS thew are pretty awful, and even with 3 you would be lucky to get that accurate on a clear day with line of sight. UMTS/HSDPA is harder and less accurate again.

In any case, these sort of ‘quality’ estimates are only done an demand on specific subscribers, e.g. at the request of the government.

The interference on your TV is a location update. This is your phone telling the network what cell you are on in case anyone wants to call you or send a text. Kind of needed really.

I quite like it. just goes to prove I don’t like going north of the M4…

just goes to prove I don’t like going north of the M4…

Why would anyone want to? 😉

Assuming you don’t have GPS

Did phones have GPS 10yrs ago?

cell towers do seem to record the last ping that a phone gives it, but the accuracy of the info isn’t really that great. its not going to pin you down to a house in a street or anything. its more general like:

tower name / location
signal direction – south east
distance 1 to 2 km

so even triangulation with multiple tower data is not going to be super accuarte, but could give a starter for 10 to a general area if youre looking for a missing person etc.

3fish’s second pic is quite interesting, it seems to log the phone into location slots or zones around the tower.

The iPhone location file that sparked this thread has nothing to do with the ability of service providers to use triangulation from masts to determine your position. This is to do witht he fact that every time location services (a core framework in the iOS system) is used (for, say, geo-tagging a photo or supporting your TomTom app) the OS records the GPS derived position into a file on the phone.

The file is as accurate as location services allows it to be – outdoors, this will be by GPS.

Only when you backup your phone by plugging it into iTunes, is the data transferred off the device.

It just so happens that the people that have published this information recently have written a little Mac application to read the file and produce a map of where you have been. As this was only a “demo”, they have intentionally made the maps a little less than perfect. It only groups location “hits” into a grid system. The actual data is GPS-derived and therefore accurate.

Rachel

not an iphone user but for those doubting the privacy implications i’ll give you an example.

when my CC and bank card were cancelled recently (thanks crc) the only way i could get cash was to go to the bank and get it over the counter. two of the security questions (and therefore 33% of what HSBC deems to be suitably secure) were asking where i had travelled abroad recently, both places i had used my phone.

fair enough, as an individual database it’s a fairly harmless block of data to anyone but those with a specific agenda, however, pool data like these with all the other easily available (and not so easy) data stored in all sorts of places and linked to you by various things like CC numbers and social networking etc and you have a growing and worryingly accurate picture of your life available to people, most importantly over which you have no control. it’s not about having nothing to hide, it’s about having the choice over who has access to the information and for what purposes it is used, something we commonly don’t consider. that said, everyone has something to hide.

Are you sure about that Rachel? Has there been some new information about it?
Several articles I read said that it is cell-phone triangulation and not GPS data.

“The data comes from cellular tower triangulation, regardless of whether you have GPS turned on, and whether you’ve allowed other applications to have access to your location. “
— LifeHacker

“The researchers said that locations are tracked by triangulating near-by cellphone towers. That suggests that the movements are tracked even when an iDevice’s GPS features are turned off.”
— El Reg

“As far as we can tell, the location is determined by triangulating against the nearest cell-phone towers. This isn’t as accurate as GPS, but presumably takes less power.”
— iPhoneTracker FAQ

Fairly certain, based on the fact I have records from locations outside mobile coverage…

Rachel

two of the security questions (and therefore 33% of what HSBC deems to be suitably secure) were asking where i had travelled abroad recently, both places i had used my phone.

Which anyone with access to your blog / Facebook page / Twitter feed / FourSquare / Flickr / Google Photos etc etc might very well know – but could only be found out from this file if they had physical access to your iPhone for long enough to back it up.

Oh – and I remember what I was doing in Manchester now… 😯 😉

Fairly certain, based on the fact I have records from locations outside mobile coverage…

Ahh well they also said:
“In some cases it can get very confused and temporarily think you’re several miles from your actual location, but these tend to be intermittent glitches.”

Some people have reported seeing locations hundreds of miles from where they actually were.

like i said, i have a choice over whether i choose to disclose that, it’s not something that’s been done without my specific knowledge.

and the impression i get is that it is also stored on your PC when you sync.

Some people have reported seeing locations hundreds of miles from where they actually were.

No – I was there

Hmm.. maybe then. Or it may also have come from you being near a known WiFi point.

Christopher Vance from Cellular.Sherlock has some interesting thing to say.

Some people have reported seeing locations hundreds of miles from where they actually were.

As I said, I’ve never been to Kirby Stephen once in my life, let alone twice. Rachel, do you have a link to anywhere that demonstrates the use of GPS when the Location Services (GPS) is not switched on in the ‘phone? If it was using GPS, then the record of my movements would be, I assume, accurate to within a few metres. You’ll obviously have to take my word for it, but I can assure you that my travels only vaguely correlate to the dots on the maps, and also place me in dozens of places I have never been to or never taken my iPhone to.

like i said, i have a choice over whether i choose to disclose that, it’s not something that’s been done without my specific knowledge.

Erm… except this isn’t being disclosed.

In fact, one conjectured reason for this database is that the phone could use it to estimate your position from the celltowers and wifi it can see without having to go and ask a third-party for this information, which would require disclosing your position.

the impression i get is that it is also stored on your PC when you sync.

Yep. In your phone backup files – which can be examined with a suitable forensic tool, provided you don’t choose to encrypt your backups and the attacker has your password and physical access to your computer.