Tag Archives: GPS

iPhone Tracks Your Every Move Apparently

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I read this article from Charles Arthur on the Guardian Tech Blog with some interest.

So your iPhone can track your every move, well we know that, it has GPS enabled, it has a track my iPhone app available and loads of us use services like FourSquare & Gowalla to check in to locations as we travel, so duh!

Using any of the location sharing services is opt in, IE you tell the iPhone to tell people via a location service where you are, so no big deal there, I choose to say where I am when I want to let you know, if anyone follows @mike_rawlinsotr and thinks that what these tweets tell you are the only times I leave the house, you are sadly mistaken. I use it sporadically when I feel like it or I am trying something out.

But according to research done by Pete Warden & Alasdair Allan your iPhone also collects data of your phones whereabouts silently in the background and stores it. Nobody is sure what Apple want this data for, if indeed they do want it, there is some discussion about it may be being collected for use in future applications, who knows?

Helpfully Warden & Allan have created an application that can read the hidden file on your iPhone and then visualise it on a heat map. So I gave it a go with my just synced iPhone.

So it looks like my phone has been about a bit, let’s zoom in and get some detail.

According to the tracking on my iPhone I have spent some time in Carlisle. Carlisle is a lovely city but I haven’t been there for any length of time in the last 12 months, I have passed through on a train a couple of times and changed for a train to Newcastle but not enough for this heat map to be accurate.

So what do I look at next? Stoke-on-Trent is the obvious one seeing as I spend a lot of time here.

A lot more data but interestingly non near my home location.

What about other places?

I have never been to Dumfries although my phone seems to think I have, I have spent more than a 2 weeks in Aberdeenshire and my phone doesn’t seem to have logged this. My phone is in a far better position than I am as I can still remember being there!

I don’t doubt that the iPhone is capable of and is possibly tracking my location and storing the data, but it isn’t doing it very accurately from what I can see.

So why is the data wrong? The only options I can come up with are:

  • The heat map application is a bit shonky, I don’t have anything to compare this with so please do share your data & findings.
  • The GPS in the iPhone isn’t always reporting correctly because of local conditions.
  • My handset could have been ‘previously enjoyed’ rather than spanking new from the factory and have someone else data still in there?

I’m not sure how I feel about this being an always on option rather than an opt in and judging the data I have had out of my phone I could have an awful lot of explaining to do to @thecurrentmrsr !

Just a minor update, Charles Arthur pointed out that this is covered by the Apple T&Cs

@ re-read the article - we found the iTunes Ts+Cs where you "opt in". But yeah, data is a bit shonky.
April 20, 2011 4:08 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@charlesarthur
Charles Arthur

but as we all know, this isn’t really an Opt In or Opt Out option, because if you want to use the hardware then you need to agree to the ever expanding Apple T&Cs.

If you have an iPhone give the application a go and see how accurate your data is.

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Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.

Fix My Street What If….

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I was speaking to Tom Steinberg of My Society earlier this evening at the Stoke-on-Trent Social Media Surgery and posed the this idea with him.

Using the Fix My Street site and the data, what about using push notifications to GPS enabled smart phones to update the site to whether problems have been fixed or not? There must be dozens of people who use FMS once then never return, for whatever reason so therefore there must be a percentage of problems sitting in the not fixed category that we could help with using the magic of crowd sourcing.

If I had an app that would send me details of un resolved problems within a given radius of my location I would be more than happy to update FMS with a fixed, not fixed response and maybe a picture.

If they could build it in to FourSquare or Gowalla so you could get badges or something that would grab the attention of a whole host of potential new users.

So when you see this new app come out, just remember it was my idea ;)

Google Local

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Released with little in the way of a fanfare Google seems to have rolled out ‘Local’ to it’s search results, according to the Google Blog location has become more important in the way we search. I guess this is due to the fact that more and more of us are using smart phones with GPS built in to them.

You may or may not have noticed the local results in your Google searches, they are there but not at the top of the search list they are just there in the middle. Another reason why you may not have noticed them is because by default the local results will be based on where your IP address is based. Mine is for some inexplicable reason in Chesterfield, so my search for Computer Shops returned.

Google Local results based on my IP address

Computer shops in Chesterfield is not a lot of use to me so I need to tell Google that I am actually in Stoke-on-Trent, to do this is quite simple, but interestingly not part of the the normal Google settings. If you notice next to the title about Local Business Results there is a hyperlink to Change Location click on here and set your default location (don’t worry you can always repeat this and select another location)

Set your location here

Change this to your town, city or postcode, make sure the remember me box is checked and press search.

Hey presto…

New results with the changed location

A new search is completed based on the new location information I have given Google.

Local search is probably more useful on your smart phone of choice. If you go to Google using your smart phone you will see an new option on the menu.

Google Local on the iPhone

Google Local on the iPhone

Clicking on this will allow you to give permission to Google Local to use your location data from the GPS in your phone to provide you with local search results.  I tried this on the train last night and found a whole raft of Chinese Takeaways in Tewkesbury.

I’m sure the tinfoil hat brigade will have something to say about privacy and big brother but to be quite honest I quite like the idea that I can find a local Chinese takeaway even if I don’t know where I am.