Other iPhone location data - spans phone resets

You know the hoo-ha about the iPhone location logs? Well here's something I haven't read elsewhere yet.

The logged data spans full wipes of the phone. I just tested the tool out on my iPhone which used to belong to a colleague and has had one full wipe when I got it, and several more since then (before and during jailbreaking).

My data shows big hotspots in the midlands, a few dense points of use and scatterings of use around them. Now these aren't mind, but are the family haunts of my colleague.

So that makes me believe any 3G iOS device will keep logging this data "fore-ever" and therefore be passed on to any new owners if the device is sold.

My opinion is if you wipe the phone of all personal data, then this data should be cleared too. But it clearly isn't.

 

Hacking hardware such as mobo's and gpu's is perfectly fine around here... but there are a few Job's worshipers around here that don't appreciate such blasphemy

 

What software did you use to check the phone's locations? I'm actually pretty curious about my own phone!

I've only seen a program written for Mac, nothing for Windows..

 

I used OSX

Yep, I used the original... Pete Warden's iPhoneTracker.

https://github.com/petewarden/iPhoneTracker

It's open source, so I'm sure someone will produce a PC port soon.

There's already an app to constantly reset the data (via cydia). I'm sure there'll soon be an app to display the data live, so if you've jailbroken you'll probably only have a few days to wait (I'm guessing though)

 

I don't worship Jobs, I respect what he's done though. Some of the iOS rules are a bit draconian, but I appreciate the benefits the rules bring and would rather have it Jobs' way than the alternative route Android took... which was good to get the market share up but is now seeing google clamp down a bit.

I'd say I'm a text book "switcher". A die-hard PC fan for a long time from the DOS days through to being a developer to being a "windows tech only" technical director. But I bought apple gear to play with iOS dev and never looked back.

With my MBP, my iPhone and iPad 2; my PC is only ever switched for gaming, managing my music + photos archive these days and that's only because there isn't enough HD space on my laptop (I'd need over 1TB)

And I'm seriously considering maxing out the HD in my MBP (Removing the optical) which will mean the PC will purely be a games machine (A damn fine one I might add). It'll then be worth dual booting it into OSX, so I'll have access to the i7 grunt when I need it.

So yep I love my apple gear, but I still don't want anyone keeping my location tracking data through a bare-metal wipe. That's not on!

 

apple stores the data on your device and syncs it with their database anonymously.
Android sends the data to google and and hashes it with your phone's unique ID
I wonder what RIM or Windows Mobile do

 

RIM break too often to actually keep any worthwhile data.

 

Windows version:
http://huseyint.com/iPhoneTrackerWin/

 

Rep'd for the link, that's some interesting information!