A play side - consequence of the iOS secret - trailing fiasco is that a lot of other different types of location data and transmissions to and from your smartphone are being conflated into a huge cumulation of fevered paranoia . But ! Do n’t freak out out .
To simplify all this ( hopefully ) , here ’s a chart that lays out what ’s happening on three of the major platforms . ( Click to embiggen . )
Update : lease ’s be clear here ( because plain I was n’t ): We ’re talking about two completely freestanding issue when it hail to your phone and positioning data . The first issue is the locating data roll up by your phone and transmitted to Apple , Google or Microsoft about nearby cell tower , Wi - Fi hotspot and potentially GPS coordinates . Every company is basically on the same pageboy here : The location Robert William Service are opt - in and your datum is anonymized . The second , wholly unlike issue is the location data your phone is storing topically on the sound itself . That ’s where Apple ’s on the wrong Sir Frederick Handley Page .
The reason your phone beam a big bucks of location information back home every so often is so that when your sound ask where it ’s at — like when you ’re using an app — it can be located pretty apace using the database of love cell towers and Wi - Fi hotspots ( crowdsourced by you and your phone ) . No bigs . Apple and Google , further , collect anon. data point about dealings conditions when you ’re using GPS . Microsoft has n’t confirm for us how it gathers dealings data , but we ’d bet it ’s the same mode . Also , NBD .
Every so often , if — and only if — you’ve ferment on location overhaul , your phone will hit up homebase with the package of information it ’s hoard about cell towers and Wi - Fi hotspots it ’s run by . That data is anonymized , though everybody does assign a unequalled ID to the data . Microsoft explains it ’s so they can “ can tell divergence between one person run short back to a location 15 times or 15 people snuff it to a location once . ” This all happens in the background . And again , if you change by reversal off location service , you opt out of all of this .
The difference of opinion between all of the platform comes down to how they store data locally . Microsoft read Windows Phone only topically caches the undivided most recent fix entry . Android apparently storesthe 200 most recent Wi - Fi hotspot and 50 most recent prison cell towers it ’s seen .
As it stands , iOS maintains a persistent recordtracking your locating — based on cell column — in a database that ’s on your speech sound and on your electronic computer , go back to whenever you instal iOS4 , in a way that ’s evenhandedly easily accessed if someone gains forcible control of your phone or machine . There ’s no way to prefer out . Itmay be a microbe or “ oversight . ”The good you’re able to do right now , if you ’re concerned about it , is to encrypt your iPhone backup man . And that ’s way , right smart different from what anybody else is doing with fix data and services . There ’s no opting out , there ’s no noesis , there ’s just creepiness .
All in all , though , the next meter you wonder how much your speech sound or the company that made it knows about where you ’ve been , do n’t freak out . Not too much , anyway .
More meter reading :
Hacker News
Alex Levinson
WSJ
AndroidAppleGooglelocationMicrosoftSecuritySmartphones
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