iPhone and iPad 3G reveal your location data

Posted by ketyung on Thu, Apr 21st, 11 at 12:55 am

iPhone or iPad 3G users may start panicking now, after knowing what a security researcher said that your iPhone and iPad 3G would reveal your location data. Your iPhone or iPad 3G does keep a record to a file on where you’ve been to, thus you may feel that your privacy is being threatened.

Security researcher, Alasdair Allan of the University of Exeter, tells us that all iPhones or iPad 3Gs are logging your location data to a file called consolidated.db. This file contains the longitude and latitude of the places that you’ve been to. Although they’re not always exact but they’re quite detailed. The location data could be given by cell-tower triangulation, whereby using it to track that a person traveling between cells or activities on the phone itself. Clip below, starting at 3:00, explaining about the content of the file, including cell IDs, coordinates, and some magnitudes of signals etc.

Of course, this has now raised many privacy concerns as the file, consolidated.db is not protected or encrypted and you get a copy on your PC or Mac whenever you sync your iPhone or iPad 3G using iTunes. (Note: there is no evidence that this file is uploaded to Apple server) The unprotected or unencrypted consolidated.db can be easily interpreted and have your location history plotted on a map, by using a tool, called iPhoneTracker.

But If you’re worried that your suspicious spouse (or someone else) will manage to snatch the consolidated.db from your computer and find out where you’ve always been to; you can then choose to encrypt the file. Just click on your device within your iTunes, check the Encrypt iPhone Backup under the Options area. Clip below is an example how the locations extracted from the file plotted on a map.