By: First privacy impressions of my new android phone

First privacy impressions of my new android phone — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:29:47 +0000

[…] when exactly this company creates structures that make us all sit in a glass house! I am very sure that this is intentionally like this. Please don’t missunderstand me. My first impression of Android is very good and I knew […]

By: Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

Jens-Fabian Goetzmann — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:39:17 +0000

I do not agree with your opinion.
A few points to think about:
1) It has been shown that the positions are NOT the positions of the phone itself. (see eg here http://bit.ly/gslPoe (DE) or here http://bit.ly/goN908 (EN))
2) On my BlackBerry, GPS takes ~5 mins to activate. Updates after that are then almost instantaneously. I would assume that this is true as well for the iPhone. Thus, I buy their argument that it is faster to use other data for an initial position assessment before GPS is available.
3) That the iPhone uses cell and WLAN info to obtain a position can easily be verified. Switch off WIFI and open the map — you will only get a very rough position estimate, based on the cell you are in. Switch on WIFI and do the same, and depending on how many WLANs are in proximity, the position estimate will be much better.
4) Obviously, for this kind of service, data needs to be send to Apple (BTW, Android/Google does the same http://bit.ly/eVSFoW (DE)). So I do not see how that in itself is wrong.
5) The encryption point is still valuable–it means that when your phone is stolen/lost, a third person cannot extract the db to create a movement profile.
The main point against Apple in my opinion is that the data are still send to Apple even if the location services are switched off — and that is something that they propose to fix.
Whether this thing should be considered a bug or not…. I don’t know. But however, what use would the DB on the device be for Apple, if the required data are sent to them anyways?
More on the topic here: http://bit.ly/fHwylf

Comments on: Apple I phone Location tracking: That's not a bug

By: First privacy impressions of my new android phone

By: Jens-Fabian Goetzmann