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Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
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iTunes New Music Releases

Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
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Discover New Music

  • Never Let Me Down [ECD]

    • 4 out of 10
    • David Bowie
    • It must be a lonely place to be considered David Bowie's worst album by just about everyone, including the artist himself. As the last album before Bowie "rebooted" and formed the band Tin Machine, "N
  • Life's Rich Pageant

    • 8 out of 10
    • R.E.M.
    • In the long series of R.E.M.'s evolution, this album (finally?) showcases their ability to capture on tape what had been happening in the live for years: heartfelt, sweat-filled performances that just
  • Another Day on Earth

    • 10 out of 10
    • Brian Eno
    • In his first proper solo release since 1996's relatively cold "The Drop," Brian Eno has constructed a whimsical and ecclectic masterpiece which is arguably one of the year's strongest records thus fa
  • Supermodified

    • 10 out of 10
    • Amon Tobin
    • The genius is in the beats. Amon Tobin creates fantastic, groovy beats behind beats. "Supermodified" rolls through your expectations of breakbeat music, and turns them up a bit. It's a mellow album, p
  • Music Has The Right To Children

    • 10 out of 10
    • Boards of Canada
    • This one will haunt you. From the first notes to the last, their sound surrounds you. BOC has put out a fantastic catalogue, and this album is a great starting point for a new listener. Jump straight

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News

iPhones Likely Tracking Apps, Not Users

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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