The world today was rocked by the sensational revelation that the iPhone is tracking our whereabouts and storing the coordinates in a file on its operating system.  I found this terribly fascinating, unlike most of the population.  Sure, there are privacy concerns and Apple needs to explain why it is they’ve been storing this information to begin with, but is it really a surprise?  Unless it comes out that this information was being transmitted outside the phone, I would hope that most iPhone users greet this news with cautious interest and take a moment to load their location information into the iPhone Tracker software the researchers that released this news have developed.

I suppose I’m a bit used to this, though.  Google Latitude, an app in my browser and iPhone, has been tracking my location since it was released.  I’ve enabled it and disabled periodically, but it has a rather detailed history of my precise movements since June 2010 (yet another reason I use two-step verification on my Google account).  It’s not public, and I don’t broadcast it.  My immediate family uses it and that’s it – my Mom calls it her Weasley Clock, after the magical device from the Harry Potter series. Read more →