iPhone? It's a spyphone: Apple devices can record your every movement

 
Daily Mail | September 30, 2014

It is tracking your every move – recording the exact time you left for work, where you bought your coffee and where you like to shop.

But this isn’t a futuristic spy drone or some sinister Big Brother state – it’s the iPhone sitting in your pocket.

Hidden in Apple phones is a function which logs every journey. The iPhones are then able to analyze the data to figure out where you live and work, basing decisions on the frequency and timing of trips.

The function – called the Frequent Locations feature – was quietly introduced to iPhones a year ago. But since access to the program is buried beneath five layers of settings menus, few people know it exists.

Apple claims the data never leaves your phone without your permission, and that it was only designed to improve mapping services.

But Professor Noel Sharkey, one of Britain’s leading computing experts, described Apple’s ability to track people as ‘terrifying’. ‘This is shocking,’ he said. ‘Every place you go, where you shop, where you have a drink – it is all recorded. This is a divorce lawyer’s dream. But what horrifies me is that it is so secret. Why did we not know about this?’

Smartphones have had the ability to track their owners’ movements since they were first installed with GPS chips and mapping functions.

But this feature, which is automatically installed on any iPhone with the iOS 7 or an iOS 8 operating system, is the first to display the movements clearly on a map. The phone records the date of every one of your journeys, your time of arrival and departure and how many times you have been to each address.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2771566/iPhone-It-s-spyphone-Apple-devices-record-movement.html#ixzz3ElZDsgTI