Untrackerd wipes stored location data on your jailbroken iPhone

Rather than deleting it, use my iPhone Geotag script to add Places to your pictures in iPhoto! http://goo.gl/OQzfB

I don't really give a rip. Who knows, it might actually be doing something useful... Bet Apple isn't the only one doing it either, given Google's track record.

I'm wondering why we need yet another background service on the iDevice to nullify this file and practice? Why can't /private/var/root/Library/Caches/locationd/consolidated.db just be symbolically linked to /dev/null ?

I just installed iPhone Tracker and ran the program. It did indeed disclose every where I've been included a trip to Europe I took in May of 2010.

I find this very distressing as my job is an investigator for a indigent criminal defense provider.

The District attorney could demand I turn this file over as part of the court discovery process. This could then be used to locate confidential sources I've used on every case, but, because the information doesn't disclose the dates I've been to these different locations, I'd be placed in the position of going over every single address, whether or not it was related to that particular case.

Now that I know this file exists, we'll be demanding this file from all of the DA's police officers, and witnesses on the cases we're investigating.

So for those saying if you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be concerned about your phone tracking you, you're obviously wrong. The DA's and cops aren't doing anything wrong, they have the right not to disclose the names of people they have had contact with but do not intend to call as witnesses.

We, however, will have to request these files otherwise, we could be setting up an appealable issue for a criminal that really should be locked up based on the claim we didn't pursue all avenues available to located exculpatory evidence.

Uhhh, there is no untrackerd in Cydia.
Was it pulled or what? Is it in a non-standard repo??

Maybe an update to this story would be a good idea?

oh im soo glad the fix im using doesnt affect my battery life, unlike the one mentioned here

I'm interested to see what functionality breaks for people who install this tweak. I can't believe Apple put this in just to be evil. As fun as it may be to imagine the engineers sitting around twirling their mustachios while thinking up ways to do evil things, I suspect they don't actually do that.

I agree there is no big conspiracy here and logging the cell towers your phone contacts as you move around onto a file on your phone is hardly big brother. After all the cell towers probably do the same thing in reverse and keep logs of what mobiles they detect in their vicinity each day.

But having said that, I do think Apple should know better and should be more careful about anything that tracks location data. It's bound to get bad publicity for the iPhone, the same way every malware app on Android gives that platform bad publicity. People don't read beyond the headlines.

It would be very easy to encrypt the file or cull information more than a few days old, or both. Probably just a decision made by an engineer told to implement a particular feature. Easiest thing to do - just stick the information into a plain database and forget about it!

How about just going to http://oo.apple.com on your iPhone. It automatically opts you out.

Cell tower/location data to improve localization.

It's in the T&C of your iOS device user agreement (not that we read these).

No gov'ment plot to turn us into cyborgs or harvest organs...