“Put on your tinfoil hats, because according to the findings of XianLi, one of the members of Hackint0sh, the iPhone spies on you,” Jesus Diaz reports for Gizmodo.
The evidence in the code shows that the Stocks and Weather applications send your IMEI number—the unique number that identifies your iPhone and is tied to your personal information—to Apple, along with the nature of the information you are looking at:
“While there’s no evidence that Apple actually uses this information for any purpose, good or evil, the code shows that every time you try to access detailed information on whatever stock, your IMEI will be sent embedded in the URL. This could be cross-referenced with IP location and the information in Apple or its partner’s databases to gather extremely valuable data for marketing purposes,” Diaz reports.
More in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s iPhone Software License Agreement states, “You agree that Apple and its subsidiaries may collect and use technical and related information, including but not limited to technical information about your iPhone, computer, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, product support and other services to you (if any) related to the iPhone Software, and to verify compliance with the terms of this License. Apple may use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve our products or to provide services or technologies to you.”
Odd.
While I don’t fear this particular information being recorded, I fear that it is being done all together. I would advise Apple to put a stop to it immediately.
The iPhone has suffered entire too much “Big Brother” control from the start with Apple telling customers what they can and cannot do with the instrument THEY purchased.
Now we find that in addition to their oppressive and stringent controls on usage they are actually WATCHING your actions and delivering PERSONAL data to advertisers.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is not the Apple I’ve supported for years. Some wrong minded people are making decisions in Cupertino these days.
The new Big Brother
Kinda hard to not have access to this stuff, even if it does seem Orwellian.
“…Apple may use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve our products or to provide services or technologies to you …”
Your IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier) identifies you.
How about we flood iphone-wu.apple.com with useless random data?
“…Kinda hard to not have access to this stuff, even if it does seem Orwellian …”
Why is it hard? Simply don’t take advantage of the ability to gather it.
Yet again, at least where the iPhone is concerned, Apple has chosen the opportunistic over the moralistic.
I can see it now. “Dear TheloniousMac, we see you spend a great deal of time in the Wilshire area and West Los Angeles and we checked your credit and we can see that you prequalify for a loan on one of these beautiful new townhomes in the area. If you were there you’d be home, which we know you’re not right now. You’re stuck in traffic.”
Is there any significance to the fact Weather and Stocks are both Yahoo! widgets?
This is unacceptable.
i feel sick. i hope at least in germany there will be judges treating this matter responsibly and hopefully they will not let apple get through with this.
I have noticed nearby speaker interference (caused by cellular communications) when ever I use the alarm clock or timer functions. I have wondered if there was information being sent to Apple about product usage. Now I know.
This is not the kind of press Apple should want with the iPhone. This story will gather steam. Most people want to protect their privacy. People store their lives on there computers and now their iPhone. If Apple gets a bad reputation with respect to the data we intrust to them, it will harm both their iPhone and Mac business.
“MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s iPhone Software License Agreement states, “You agree that Apple and its subsidiaries may collect and use technical and related information, including but not limited to technical information about your iPhone, computer, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, product support and other services to you (if any) related to the iPhone Software, and to verify compliance with the terms of this License. Apple may use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve our products or to provide services or technologies to you.””
So in other words, it’s ok?
Come on fanboys, this sux and you know it. It’s the Evil Empire all over again, and it’s not ok. This is Microsoft territory now, and it’s a LOT worse with the relationship between Apple and Google/DoubleClick.
What’s wrong with tracking information? Unless you have something to hide? I would agree that this would be Orwellian when I see a prepondrance of evidence that this is the case–i.e., direct advertising to the individua via the iPhone. However, I have not seen this to be the fact. In the foreseeable future, maybe. I just don’t see it happening now.
I don’t like being tracked, profiled or spyed upon. The idea of privacy seems to be lost on corporations as a whole. This idea that a person doesn’t have the sense to choose for themselves is not true. I find this akin to a salesperson following you around the store all day. And who really thinks that any data collect won’t be used? Get real! Why are they collecting that data anyway?
Anybody hear of “trusted computing”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_computing
Apple didn’t invent it!
You know it seems odd that people complain about this sort of stuff, but if you click on the “I Agree” button when you install software, aren’t you saying that you agree with the terms of the license? If we don’t take time to read the fine print, we have no one else to blame. If you don’t like it, quit agreeing to things you haven’t taken the time to read!
Deep breaths everyone
The user agreement said this would happen, right? The inane whining of trolls always amazes me. They keep expecting Apple to say they’ll collect data and then somehow forget to collect data. I suppose liars expect the whole world to lie as well. You get what you sign up for.
What’s wrong with tracking information? Unless you have something to hide?
Yeah, be good consumers and just take it like the bitches you know you are.
Usually every time you visit a website, your IP address is logged, unless you take extra steps of setting up a proxy server. Your computer’s MAC address is also sent along with every request. Website have access to your computer’s OS and browser information.
Unless you’ve blocked your phone number, which is personal to you, it is logged when you call any other cell phone or business that uses some form of call monitoring system or call display.
Now, that said, as a programmer and website creator (of which widgets are basically mini versions of), I see _no_ good reason for the phone’s IMEI number to be sent along with every Stocks or Weather request. That just doesn’t make any sense at all, and I hope Apple takes the appropriate action to remove this parameter from the request URL.
“The user agreement said this would happen, right?”
—————–
No, as theloniousMac mentioned above, the user agreement says:
“…Apple may use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve our products or to provide services or technologies to you …”
However, Your IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier) identifies you.
This is in fact a violation of the user agreement that we agreed to.
snore
@Mean Guy,Ok so lets say Apple doesn’t use this data what’s the worst that can happen? No timely improvement to the interface , no new variants of the Iphone product line. No new features, the Iphone becomes a one trick pony and MS mobile starts to catch up with Vista Mobile (hahahaharrrggggg). I personally don’t mind this because with all that data Apple still is not preventing you from hacking your own personal phone despite the bitching of the hacking public. IF this get’s me a better product faster I’m all for it. Microsoft and Record companies use this data to squeeze more money from products already sold. Apple uses this to design the next life productivity tools…see the difference. 2 tenets in life it’s good to live by :
1. you can’t cheat an honest person and
2. If you have nothing to hide you have no reason to be paranoid.
since 1)nobody yet has any idea what is being collected or what it is used for, and 2) despite the tinfoil hat group having shown up in the past to gripe about this kind of stuff it has always turned out that Apple has been pretty fair and not used any questionable data or kept personal records (iTunes mini store anyone?) how about i suggest a wild idea.
stop, take a breath, wait to freak out until something is actually known.
i swear, the majority of people sit like sheep while the bush government spies on everything we do, but when a company with no past record to question tries to make sure their product is actually working as advertised the kooks come outta the woodwork…..
coolfactor: Usually every time you visit a website, your IP address is logged, unless you take extra steps of setting up a proxy server. Your computer’s MAC address is also sent along with every request. Website have access to your computer’s OS and browser information.
I don’t think that’s correct… your IP address is of course transmitted to allow the server to answer, but your MAC address is not transmitted over the internet.
Your MAC address is only known to the DSL router you’re going through, but it hides it from the external network. And your IP address is usually dynamic and by law not allowed to be known to the owner of the external server (at least in Germany).
Unnecessarily sending the IMEI along with a very pedestrian server request would be a major breach of german data protection laws. The excerpt above doesn’t really seem to substantiate that claim, but if that should really happen, Apple should brace itself for a major shitstorm of harshly negative publicity…
I suspect that Apple will change this once enough people formally complain about it.
or A class action lawsuit may change it…….