London, April 22 : iPhone users beware! Make sure you've got nothing to hide, or your phone might reveal your secret flings.
It has emerged that iPhones have an 'infidelity app' that can secretly keep track of love cheats and could be viewed by a jealous spouse.
Two British software developers recently exposed that the Apple iphone saves the user's locations and movements, along with a time and date stamp, and stores them in a file.
It then copies the data to the owner's computer whenever the two are synchronised.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody - a jealous spouse, a private detective - with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been,' the Daily Mail quoted Pete Warden, one of the researchers who discovered the file, as saying.
Warden and his fellow researcher Alasdair Allan have set up a web page giving away a programme that lets Apple users check what location data their phone is storing. Other GPS-enabled smartphones do not have the same function, they said.
Although mobile phone networks routinely record the locations of customers' handsets, this information is only available to police and other government agencies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
In contrast, if a thief were to steal an iPhone, he could extract the location database directly.
And anyone with access to an iPhone user's computer could run Warden and Allan's application and see a map of the phone's movements.
Using the programme, they can also view the phone's location on a specific date, see all the locations a user has ever visited with their phone, or create an animated map of its movements over time.
It is understood the tracking started with Apple's iOS 4 update, published in June 2010, meaning that some phones could contain almost a year's worth of data on their owners' whereabouts.
It has emerged that iPhones have an 'infidelity app' that can secretly keep track of love cheats and could be viewed by a jealous spouse.
Two British software developers recently exposed that the Apple iphone saves the user's locations and movements, along with a time and date stamp, and stores them in a file.
It then copies the data to the owner's computer whenever the two are synchronised.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody - a jealous spouse, a private detective - with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been,' the Daily Mail quoted Pete Warden, one of the researchers who discovered the file, as saying.
Warden and his fellow researcher Alasdair Allan have set up a web page giving away a programme that lets Apple users check what location data their phone is storing. Other GPS-enabled smartphones do not have the same function, they said.
Although mobile phone networks routinely record the locations of customers' handsets, this information is only available to police and other government agencies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
In contrast, if a thief were to steal an iPhone, he could extract the location database directly.
And anyone with access to an iPhone user's computer could run Warden and Allan's application and see a map of the phone's movements.
Using the programme, they can also view the phone's location on a specific date, see all the locations a user has ever visited with their phone, or create an animated map of its movements over time.
It is understood the tracking started with Apple's iOS 4 update, published in June 2010, meaning that some phones could contain almost a year's worth of data on their owners' whereabouts.
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