Actually, iPhone Sends Your Location to Apple Twice a Day. In practice, this file contains your travel history.
It should be noted that this file can't be accessed by third-party apps on an iPhone, as you need root rights to reach it. However, the file is copied to your PC or Mac during standard iPhone sync operations and is accessible from there. Yesterday, security researchers Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan released an application that can take such a file and show your movements on a map. Now, this sounds bad from a privacy viewpoint. For example, authorities could gain a court order to do a forensic examination on your phone to figure out where you've been. But why is Apple collecting this information to begin with? Like Google, Apple maintains a global database of the locations of Wi-Fi networks.
We know how Google collected their location database: they recorded them world-wide while they had their Google Maps Street View cars driving around the globe. Where did Apple get their location database? However, the Skyhook database is expensive. Apple Responds To Location Tracking Kerfuffle, Says It’s Innocent, Blames Bugs. Apple aims to – finally – set the record straight about the gathering and use of location information by iOS devices.
The entire Q&A can be found below. Apple starts off by stating that it has never tracked, and will never track the location of a customer’s iPhone. The company goes on to say it’s partly to blame for any ‘confusion’ about it, though, because users haven’t been ‘educated’ to fully understand the technical issues with providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information.
That said, the company did identify several ‘bugs’ which it says it will fix shortly. As we posited earlier, Apple says it’s merely maintaining a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending geo-tagged locations, both anonymously and encrypted.
Apple says it simply can not identify the source of this data (i.e. your location). Does Apple’s response sound credible to you? Apple Q&A on Location Data: Push Notifications Meet Dating: meetMoi NOW Alerts You When Matches Are Nearby. Launching today on the Android Platform is meetMoi NOW, a mobile dating app that alerts users when a match is nearby and lets the brave find a date on the spot.
What’s unique about meetMoi is that it weds geo-location and push with dating; You can download it from the Android Marketplace, login or use Facebook Connect, and then just walk around while it searches for potential beaus. The app runs in the background persistently updating your location (when you choose) and then pushes matches to you when they are within 1 mile of wherever you are. When a suitable person is spotted their photo is pushed to your screen, with a 60 minute expiration time on the option to meet.
If you both say “yes” then you have the option of chatting for 30 minutes and then meeting up in real life. Says former SixDegrees founder and meetMoi NOW CEO Andrew Weinreich, “There’s lots of people into mobile dating, but nobody is saying ‘What is dating going to look like 10 years from now?’” Apple.