Apple Thoughts: No Big Surprise: iPad 3G and iPhone Tracking and Recording Location

"Today at Where 2.0 Pete Warden and I will announce the discovery that your iPhone, and your 3G iPad, is regularly recording the position of your device into a hidden file. Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device has been storing a long list of locations and time stamps. We're not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it's clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations."

Another tempest in a teapot. This article is based on information discussed back in January 2011 in Forensic Focus ( http://www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7012 ), and is really not a new discovery. iDevices contain a file called consolidated.db, with a time stamp and location coordinates (but no personally identifiable data) saved. This file is maintained and is possibly used for location services and could be how "Find my iPhone" works. I wonder if the authors understand that location services don't work by magic, but rely on collecting and recording your location. Clearly their recommendation that iDevice backups be encrypted (with a strong password) is a good suggestion, but their implication that something sinister "may" be happening smacks of paranoia to me.