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    Categories: MobileShift

What Do You Think About iPhones Tracking You?

There is a bizarre competition among tech firms to see who can creep us out the most. First came Google and its peeping StreetView vans loaded with webcams. Then came Facebook and its “brilliant” Beacon feature that broadcast items you recently bought to your friends. Now comes news from a pair of researchers that Apple has a tracking file in iPhones and iPads with iOS 4 that saves your location data. And twice a day that information is beamed to Apple itself. Now that can be a good thing if you lose your iPhone or have it stolen. And law enforcement officers have been using tracking on phones to hunt down criminals for years. But what about this secret feature that few people knew about? Should Apple come clean? Fix it? Let you opt out? Share your thoughts in our poll, or give us your own take in the comments below.



> Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is recording your moves at O’Reilly Radar

> iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go at the Guardian

> Apple iPhone Tracking Is Probably a Mistake, Researchers Say at Bloomberg

> Investigators use iPhones to track owners’ movements at SJ Mercury News

> iPhone Geo Data Row Rumbles On at Time Techland

> Apple, Google Collect User Data at Wall Street Journal

Mark Glaser :Mark Glaser is founder and executive director of MediaShift. He contributes regularly to Digital Content Next’s InContext site and newsletter. Glaser is a longtime freelance journalist whose career includes columns on hip-hop, reviews of videogames, travel stories, and humor columns that poked fun at the titans of technology. From 2001 to 2005, he wrote a weekly column for USC Annenberg School of Communication's Online Journalism Review. Glaser has written essays for Harvard's Nieman Reports and the website for the Yale Center for Globalization. Glaser has written columns on the Internet and technology for the Los Angeles Times, CNET and HotWired, and has written features for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, the San Jose Mercury News, and many other publications. He was the lead writer for the Industry Standard's award-winning "Media Grok" daily email newsletter during the dot-com heyday, and was named a finalist for a 2004 Online Journalism Award in the Online Commentary category for his OJR column. Glaser won the Innovation Journalism Award in 2010 from the Stanford Center for Innovation and Communication. Glaser received a Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife Renee and his two sons, Julian and Everett. Glaser has been a guest on PBS' "Newshour," NPR's "Talk of the Nation," KALW's "Media Roundtable" and TechTV's "Silicon Spin." He has given keynote speeches at Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Diversity Retreat and the College Media Assocation's national convention. He has been part of the lecture/concert series at Yale Law School and Arkansas State University, and has moderated many industry panels. He spoke in May 2013 to the Maui Business Brainstormers about the "Digital Media Revolution." To inquire about speaking opportunities, please use the site's Contact Form.

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