Comment by mankyd
4 years ago
Not mentioned in the headline: When the user is _not_ logged in, iOS collects "location" whereas Android does not.
I am actually a little surprised that iOS would gather this information. What use would it serve?
4 years ago
Not mentioned in the headline: When the user is _not_ logged in, iOS collects "location" whereas Android does not.
I am actually a little surprised that iOS would gather this information. What use would it serve?
It's possible this is referring to this feature: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/12/apple-explains-mysteriou...
Generally speaking, Apple is drastically better about location services privacy. For instance, Apple Maps does not tie any location data nor direction requests to your Apple ID, and regularly rotates identifiers for devices used by the service: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212039
That link is returning "429 Too Many Requests." What feature is it you're referring to?
There's an Ultra Wideband radio in the iPhone 11 and newer that isn't legal to use in all countries. Apple uses a location request sometimes just to determine if the device can legally run that radio or not.
11 replies →
Find My Phone? It is a choice to enroll in this, and it’s mighty convenient when you lose or get your phone stolen.
No, it's the location it uses to report to Apple Maps for the purposes of improving traffic.
Much, much more than traffic, though that is useful. The anonymized probe data is used to refine business driveways inferred from satellite imagery, for example. That’s why suddenly Maps can often route you to the correct parking lot instead of a nearby curb. Think about it: if you know a phone is navigating to Safeway, where the user stops navigation is potentially interesting in aggregate and divulges almost nothing except the average parking preference of an iOS user.
Source: Worked on that. One example of hundreds.
Presumably it could wait until someone actually asks for the phone's location in that case. No need to report the location if no one's asked for it.
That works when you're not logged in?
One of the services Apple generally provides is that a phone is locked to a given Apple ID, such that if you wipe it, it still knows it belongs to a given owner, and you need to unlock that for someone else to activate it. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest Apple would want Find My iPhone to work even after it's reset.
That being said, my theory is in another comment.
Can you even imagine? Lost your phone? Did you make sure that you were logged in before you lost it? Did the thief reset the phone and log you out? Oh, guess you can't find your phone now. Sorry.
2 replies →
Yes, when your phone is locked, but only if you've logged the phone into your iCloud account.
> When the user is _not_ logged in
Does this matter? How many people do you know that aren't logged in on their phones? It is literally one the first things Android asks you to do even before showing you the main screen.
I also found this to be an almost useless case to examine. The number of people not-logged-in must be infinitesimal.
I didn’t think iOS even lets you past the welcome screen without signing in.
iOS setup encourages you to sign in or create an account if necessary. Skipping is also an option.
Might be for crowd sourcing open wifi location data.
Find my iphone?
This is for logged-out. I believe find-my-iphone is only for users logged into their iCloud accounts.
You are correct, Find My … only works if you’re signed in with an Apple ID to iCloud.
> When the user is _not_ logged in, iOS collects "location" whereas Android does not.
This may be only technically true. It's not Android, it's Google Play Services, which collects "anonymized", high-accuracy[1] location data constantly.
[1] Yeah, that's actually a contradiction-in-terms. There is no such thing as anonymized, high-accuracy location data.
What does login state have to do here? The controls for device analytics are available and controllable separately from any login state.
You really expect the headline to list out arbitrary specific examples?
It doesn’t seem like they actually “collect” this information with any identifier and only use it for limited strict purposes. This is unlike google who can pop up a map of everywhere you’ve been minute by minute over the last 5 years. I guess that’s only when you’re logged in to your google account, but that’s 99% of Android phones.