Researcher: Apple tracks iPhone, iPad users whereabouts

Apple iPhones and 3G iPads running iOS 4 might be tracking their owners movements, a new report from OReilly Radar claims.

Alasdair Allan, senior research fellow in astronomy at the University of Exeter, and writer Pete Warden say they have found evidence that the iPhone, 3G iPad, and backups on users computers contain detailed location information, including latitude, longitude, and time stamps, that show where the mobile devices have been. In addition, the information is unencrypted and unprotected, and its on any machine youve synched with your iOS device, they claim.

The information is reportedly stored in a file called consolidated.db. The writers claim that the information, which isnt always exact, started being collected around the time of the launch of iOS 4 last year. They say that they have found tens of thousands of data points in this file that, they believe, were collected via cell-tower triangulation.

The fact that the iPhone or 3G iPad can be tracked isnt all that surprising. Apple currently offers a free app, Find My iPhone, that lets users track their smartphone from another device. The service is also available to iPad and iPod Touch owners.

However, the claims made by Allan and Warden are a bit different. For one, in their findings, users dont know that theyre being tracked. Moreover, exactly why that information is reportedly being tracked is unknown at this point. And as they rightly noted, cell phone companies have always had this data, but it takes a court order to access it.

Although the alleged findings will raise some red flags in the privacy and security community, its worth noting that the information the writers allegedly came across is not being leaked out over the Web.

People who are concerned that their iPhone or iPad is tracking their locations can find out with the help of an application Allan and Warden released, named iPhone Tracker. The open-source application maps all the points of location information saved in the users devices.

I ran the application on my computer to find out if my iPhone has been tracking me. It returned a detailed map showing the many places Ive been with my smartphone.

Allan and Warden plan to discuss their findings in more detail later today at the Where 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, Calif.