iPhone Privacy – Is your iPhone Spying on you? How to Fix it

Recently, there had been privacy concerns over Palm Pre. Palm Pre secretly stored user activity and data which can be pulled by the service provider or a potential hacker.

Joey Hess discovered the Pre’s smartphone OS was sending users’ GPS locations back to Palm on a daily basis. According to Joey “ I’ve been taking a closer look at the WebOS side of my Palm Pre tonight, and I noticed that it periodically uploads information to Palm, Inc. The first thing sent is intended to be my GPS location. It’s the same location I get if I open the map app on the Pre. Not very accurate in this case, but I’ve seen it be accurate enough to find my house before. “ Yeah, it’s allowed by the EULA that you must accept to use the Palm Pre. In case of Apple EULA they don’t forces you to accept such kind of agreements. But some analytics services like Pinch Media tracks many of your information and you don’t even knows about that.

But what about iPhone? Does it also store your activity?

Yes it does.

Saurik, lead developer of iPhone Cydia installer, raised Privacy as one of the key concerns. He released a new Appication t tackle this. Its a kind application that allows you to selectively opt-out of sending anonymous usage statistics to some app developers.

ReadWriteWeb revealed in their recent post Dear iPhone Users: Your Apps are Spying on You. In answer of RWW Pinch media also posted details to clarify that Pinch media is not a Spyware, and they described in detail how they uses these information.

iPhone app Analytics is a service for iPhone app developers offered by Pinch Media, Mobclix, Medialets and Flurry that generates detailed statistics about the user of their app. lets take a quick look how these services collects your location, it must first ask you for permission to use your location.  If you tap “Don’t Allow”, it will ask you again in about a minute, the next time its ad changes.  So you either stop using this app, or you submit and tap “OK” and your locations will be collected.

So what all can iPhone leak out?

Lets take a look what Pinch Media gathered your information without your knowledge :

  • iPhone’s unique ID
  • iPhone model
  • OS version
  • Application version (in this case, camera zoom 1.x)
  • If the application is cracked/pirated
  • If your iPhone is jailbroken
  • Time & date you start the application
  • Time & date you close the application
  • Your current latitude & longitude
  • Your gender (if Facebook enabled)
  • Your birth month (if Facebook enabled)
  • Your birth year (if Facebook enabled)

Your Apps spying on you and you don’t even know about this, here we got our Reason #9635232 to Jailbreak your iPhone.

Saurik announced Privacy to make you able disabling the tracking on you. This app is a team effort of Saurik, Big Boss and the provider of these services. Privacy Cydia app is available for free via Sauriks’ repo which is default in Cydia.

  • To install Privacy launch the Cydia and do a simple search for  “Privacy” and install it.
  • Reboot, and then goto Setting > Privacy – here you can enable or disable the global tracking. For details check the screenshots given above.

In order to install Privacy you need Cydia, available for jailbroken phones only.

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5 thoughts on “iPhone Privacy – Is your iPhone Spying on you? How to Fix it”

  1. Privacy concerns regarding iPhone (or any other mobile device) are spreaded all over the net.
    Many Poeple are looking for solutions in order to keep their private data… private.
    As there are many solutions for jailbroken devices, not many exist for legit devices.
    But there are a few. like 1password which helps you protect passwords.
    As described in this article, the main concern is that your device will fall to the wrong hands which might take advantage of your private data.
    In addition to apps like 1password, i ran into the following app – PrivateTIP, which gives a creative/innovative solution for keeping your privacy on your device.
    PrivateTIP app lets you hide text inside your photos. Innocent looking photos in your photo lib now can contain secret text which can only be opened by the application.
    You might want to take look at it.

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  2. Privacy concerns regarding iPhone (or any other mobile device) are spreaded all over the net.
    Many Poeple are looking for solutions in order to keep their private data… private.
    As there are many solutions for jailbroken devices, not many exist for legit devices.
    But there are a few. like 1password which helps you protect passwords.
    As described in this article, the main concern is that your device will fall to the wrong hands which might take advantage of your private data.
    In addition to apps like 1password, i ran into the following app – PrivateTIP, which gives a creative/innovative solution for keeping your privacy on your device.
    PrivateTIP app lets you hide text inside your photos. Innocent looking photos in your photo lib now can contain secret text which can only be opened by the application.
    You might want to take look at it.

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  3. Hmm… This is very interesting, but I wonder…. How many people shocked by this ” major breach of trust and ethics” have a genuine licensed copy? I think that if one has nothing to hide, one needn’t draw their curtains…

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  4. Apple now give themselves the right to track your gps location too. This is enforced even on pre- existing customers, by witholding apps until the user agrees to the new terms. You would never guess the extent of their tracking just by Reading the terms though. To the poster below, “one” doesn't have anything to hide but one doesn't want to share ones movements with apple, one objects to being forced into it, and one objects to being misled

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