2 steps to stay safe from the iPhone tracking file

There is a growing concern about a file that has been found on iPhones and iPads 3G that stores location data without the authorization of the users.

People are wondering what for is Apple creating and using this file. There could be many good and bad reasons, but so far nobody could find any evidence that Apple is uploading this information to its servers.

The question is, how is this file putting your privacy in danger? There are two options:

1. An app accessing the file and uploading the information to somebody
2. A desktop application accessing this file from an iTunes backup in your PC or Mac

So how can people stay safe from these potential security problems? With these two simple steps:

1. Don’t jailbreak your iPhone: iOS doesn’t allow apps to access files outside of their own space. But iPhones jailbroken by users without the right knowledge could be vulnerable to malicious apps.
2. Encrypt your iTunes Backups: iTunes has an option that activates data encryption for the iPhone and iPad backups. When the information is encrypted, application cannot access this information.

If you have any questions, please let me your comments!

Picture by Tim Green.

Comments

[Gary]

Just out of interest would it be possible for hackers to get hold of any of this information. We've already seen Sony take a massive popularity hit with the Playstation Network Hack. It's quite worrying that Apple have been holding our data for sometime without anybody even knowing.

I'll be sure to encrypt my backups in future!

[Guillermo Acilu]

Thanks for your comment Gary.
We don't have any other choice than trusting Apple in this one. They've said that the file is not used for tracking purposes, if they are using it and people find out it would be very bad PR for them.
Personally I don't think they need to track us in this way. Anyway, the problem was fixed in the last iOS release.

[Gary]

Thanks for your reply, I'd better update my version of iOS in that case too!