Location, Location, Location! What you don't know that they know! (Part 2)

So, some of you may remember this post. Well this is part two of that. I contemplated for about 15mins if I should end the post with the fact that your phone is also capable of tracking your movements but decided against it. Well that would been pretty cool, and mildly prophetic, but hindsight is always 20/20. Well back to the present and how your phone tracks you.

So, recently people discovered, much to their surprise, that the iPhone stores an unencrypted history of where you have been for the past 10 months. I seem to be the only person whom this did not surprise. In fact if the phone did not store any location history would surprise me. I often, mostly jokingly, say to my friends who own Apple products that Steve Jobs owns their souls. After reading this, some of them are starting to think it's true (side-note: this article seems to agree).

It also surfaced that android phones do exactly the same thing. So much for being the free and open platform right? So, I would normally take this time to be smug that I am use a Symbian smartphone, but in all honesty, I would not be surprised if they did the exact same thing. Of course I haven't forgotten all you lovely Blackberry users. RIM may well be doing the exact same thing, but I have not found any solid evidence either way.

So, base assumption: if you have a smartphone, it has a record of where you have been for the past x amount of time. Why is this a) done? and b) a problem? Well in the previous post, I covered most of the answer to b), so lets move on to why it is done. The official answer: "to improve the quality of our location based services." The real answer: "to improve the quality of our location based services." SHOCKER!

Yes, I am aware that this law enforcement agencies are aware of this data and sometimes use this data in the course of enforcing the law. But in all fairness, when the cops are looking for you, the normal rules don't totally apply. So, back to the main point: it really does help them improve the location based services. There is no other way than to actually use your actual location data. If you want a great app that finds the nearest bar, restaurant or even condoms in New York (was very amused when I read that article), your handset manufacturer needs to collect this data.

The upshot: this is something you have to give in order for you to get the services that you want. I for one think it's a fair trade-off. I have no proof that my phone does this, but if it turns out that it does, I'm OK with that. Again, in the digital age, privacy is not quite what it used to be, which is a fact we all have to deal with.