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iPhones Likely Tracking Apps, Not Users
Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 3:00 PM - by Jeff Gamet
Following a report that Apple’s iPhone may be using unique identifier codes to track user activity, some clever iPhone users in Germany started tracking the data that their handhelds were transmitting. The verdict: It looks Apple is receiving generic application identifiers, not user-specific information.
The concern over the possibility that Apple may be tracking individual iPhone user activity began when code in the Weather and Stock applications appeared to show that Apple was collecting the unit’s IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity, identification number every time a stock quote or weather update was requested. Since each iPhone has a unique IMEI code, and Apple collects user information when an iPhone is activated, there was some fear that the company might be linking the codes to the user and tracking individual activity.
Instead of individual user activity, however, it appears that Apple is receiving the identifier code, or UUID, for the application that is requesting data, and nothing about the user or the data they are receiving.
The docpool.org blog checked the UUID codes for the Stock and Weather applications on more than twelve different iPhones and found that they were the same. The code for the Stock application is A021D9E9-28F3-4144-AC1D-D1344D703D39 and the code for the Weather application is EDF47604-CDF8-47D8-9BDF-F0E0E8E9A1D4, and that’s what was transmitted to Apple’s servers.
The confusion over what information each iPhone transmits may have stemmed from Apple’s use of the character string "IMEI" in each application’s code. Since that usually indicates a device-specific identifier, the natural assumption was that Apple was harvesting information about individual user activity. For now, however, it looks like Apple is honoring iPhone user privacy.
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