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News
iPhone Apps Hide Code for Tracking Users
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 3:00 PM - by Jeff Gamet
The iPhone may be great at helping users track down information on the go, but they may also be tracking information about their users, and reporting back to Apple. It appears that both the Weather and Stock applications on the combination iPod and smart phone contain a piece of code that collects the handheld’s IMEI number and transmits it to Apple.
An IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity, number is a unique code that identifies individual cell phones. It does not identify the cell phone user directly, but since Apple maintains records on activated iPhones, it is possible that the company is linking users to their handheld’s IMEI number.
The information surfaced on the Hackint0sh Web forums where one poster stumbled on the code snippets while trying to make modifications to the iPhone’s Stock application. The piece of code apparently transmits an iPhone’s IMEI number to Apple whenever a stock quote update is initiated.
The iPhone’s Stock application gets information through the Yahoo! stock service, so it is possible that the information is being used to verify that an iPhone is accessing the data and isn’t being used to track user activity. The fact that the code is there, however, has many iPhone users concerned over what information Apple could be collecting without their knowledge.
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