Report: iPhone, iPad track user locations

A hidden file in the iOS software keeps a detailed log of user location and time, making tracking easy.

A file embedded in current iPhone and iPad devices records a complete log of its user’s location over time, security researchers said Wednesday.

The popular Apple devices reportedly keeps a list of the user’s locations on a file in the phone and on the computer of the user when they sync or connect their device to iTunes.

“At first we weren’t sure how much data was there,” researchers Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan told The Guardian, “but after we dug further and visualized the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements.”

The file “consolidation.db” keeps a log of timestamps as well as latitude and longitude coordinates. The researchers said it appeared that Apple put the file into the phone when it released iOS 4.0 in in June 2010.

The iPhone has long been able to pinpoint its location using Apps like Apple Maps or Google Earth, but it was previously not known that the devices kept a hard copy of all it’s locations.

The researchers, however, said they do not see any evidence that the information is ever transmitted back to Apple or any other third party.