Frankly speaking, I don’t know if you’ll consider what I’m going to suggest you do as playing or as raising a red flag. Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I was always wondering what kind of information is stored (and can eventually be exploited) on those GPS-enabled devices. Learn about phone tracking!
iPhone and iPad keep time-stamped track
As I did some “research” on the internet for some facts about it, I stumbled on this one-year-old story that actually demonstrates that iPhone (as well as iPad) keep time-stamped track of every places the iPhone has been to. Well, this, IMHO, is quite interesting (or horrifying, depending on how private your movements should be).
If you read the article above, you’ll see that once someone gets access to specific files stored on your iPhone (or iPad) then they can plot it on some kind of map (here, the example refers to Open Street Map). So, you can get a nice set of points plotted on actual maps showing where the iPhone has been, at what specific time. Duh? I can see you now doing a rewind of all the “lies” you may have said about the location you should be. You are not that kind of person who says that you’re already “on the way and should be there soon “while you’ve just put your pants and shoes on and locking the door – aren’t you?
But how does phone tracking work?
In fact, if you are a happy owner of an iPhone or an iPad (and gosh, there’s a lot of them out there), I suggest you install this opensource app that will plot your movements into a nice map. Install it and then see how phone tracking works. Under normal circumstances, this app should draw a nice map of the places where your iPhone (or iPad) have been. You may wonder what’s the point here of this game?
Well, first of all, I just want to get some feedback from actual users if the same thing applies one year after this story has made the front page. Heck, if this has made such a huge coverage last April, won’t it be great to know if things have changed (or not) one year later? And one of the ways to verify it is to test it by yourself. Isn’t it? I have put this article into the “funny” category since the result for each one of How-to-hide-ip readers may be funny (hey, I’d love to hear from your results in the comment section).
I’m pretty sure most of our readers won’t find it funny once their phone (or the app) actually plot correct locations on a nicely Open Street Map. I suggest you view the results alone first since there may be someplace you don’t want your friends to know- if you know what I mean.
What to do?
So why don’t you go ahead and download the app, then check if the map still shows the correct result? One caution though, I haven’t checked if there have been some updates at Apple’s side since that one-year article. So chances are that result may vary depending on if your phone has been updated, or if some privacy settings have been modified on your iPhone/iPad since then. But I bet it’s always interesting to be fixed on that point by actually testing it out.
Hey, in case you’re still too amazed by this “discovery”, just don’t let these results hang around as they may be used against you. And, remember, How-To-Hide-IP readers are eager to know some excerpts of your results: is it still tracking your movements? Is it showing something else?