奇速英语

苹果手机—你身边的无人侦察机

It is tracking your every move – recording the exact time you left for work, where you bought your coffee and where you like to shop. This isn’t a future spy drone – it’s the iPhone sitting in your pocket.

Hidden in Apple phones is a function which records every journey. The iPhones are then able to analyze the data to work out where you live and work, basing decisions on the frequency and timing of trips.

Apple claims the data never leaves your phone without your permission, and that it was only designed to improve mapping services. But Professor Noel Sharkey, one of Britain’s leading computing experts, described Apple’s ability to track people as “terrifying”. “This is shocking,” he said. “Every place you go, where you shop, where you have a drink – it is all recorded. This is a divorce lawyer’s dream. But what horrifies me is that it is so secret.”

Smartphones have had the ability to track their owners’ movements since they were first installed with GPS chips and mapping functions. But this feature is the first to display the movements clearly on a map. The phone records the date of every one of your journeys, your time of arrival and departure and how many times you have been to each address.

Apple insists the data only leaves the phone if users give their permission by selecting the Improve Maps option in the phone’s privacy menu. But some people worry that the data could be seen by a snooping boss, a jealous wife, or even seized by police or the government. In an open letter this month, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said: “Our business model is very straightforward. We don’t make money from the information on your iPhone or in iCloud.”

But Professor Sharkey said: “Apple might promise not to use our location information for advertising. And many of our authorities might be quite kind-hearted at the moment. But if you put that information in someone else’s hands, then it becomes powerful, and in some cases, dangerous.”