iPhone tracking function can secretly keep track on love cheats

Add to My Stories If the thought of venturing out without your mobile fills you with dread, make sure youve got nothing to hide.
Owners of iPhones are having their locations and movements secretly tracked and stored in a file that could be seen by a jealous spouse, it has emerged.
Researchers have discovered that the Apple device saves the users latitude and longitude, along with a time and date stamp.

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Secret surveillance: Red, orange and purple blobs on the map show the locations and phone use of an iPhone owner over a period of timeIt then copies the data to the owners computer whenever the two are synchronised.
This means anyone who stole the phone or gained access to the computer it is paired with could build a detailed picture of the owners movements.

Tracking device: Some users could have a year's location information stored. (Posed by model) The previously unknown data store described as the infidelity app was exposed by two British software developers.
Apple has made it possible for almost anybody a jealous spouse, a private detective with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where youve been, said Pete Warden, one of the researchers who discovered the file.Mr Warden and his fellow researcher Alasdair Allan have set up a web page giving away a programme that lets Apple users check what location data their phone is storing. Other GPS-enabled smartphones do not have the same function, they said.
Although mobile phone networks routinely record the locations of customers handsets, this information is only available to police and other government agencies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
In contrast, if a thief were to steal an iPhone, he could ext! ract the location database directly.
And anyone with access to an iPhone users computer could run Mr Warden and Mr Allans application and see a map of the phones movements.
Using the programme, they can also view the phones location on a specific date, see all the locations a user has ever visited with their phone, or create an animated map of its movements over time.
It is understood the tracking started with Apples iOS 4 update, published in June 2010, meaning that some phones could contain almost a years worth of data on their owners whereabouts.

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The iPhone records the information whether or not the user agrees to being tracked, and Apple has not revealed whether the function can be disabled.
Daniel Hamilton, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: I think the most concerning thing is that people are simply unaware that this vast database is being created.
People ought to be able to move around freely without accumulating a digital record of all their movements.