Phones tracking your movements? Why so surprised?

Last week it was discovered by accident that the iPhone had been tracking peoples movements and saving the information to a file on the phone which was then saved on any computer you Synced your iPhone with. A few days later it was discovered that Android phones were doing similar sort of tracking. What surprised me is not the fact that phone was “tracking” me, but the fact people were shocked and surprised the phone was tracking them. It wouldn’t surprise me if almost all mobile phones track the users in some sort of way, it is simply just the iPhone and Android phones where files containing the data has been found.

It is naieve to think that you have never been tracked when you have a mobile phone, large organisations have had the ability to track your rough movements for years, even before the iPhone, Android, or any phone having GPS built in. What I am talking about are the mobile network providers, as they can triangulate a phones rough location from the cell towers, who says that they don’t check the location of users regularly and keep a record of it? I am not saying they do, but the capability for this type of tracking to be done for years, and if they did we would never know. The very first iPhone used Cell Tower triangulation when you used Google Maps, so you could see how accurate triangulation can be nowadays.

So when you have a mobile phone, bear in mind that your phone could be, and probably is tracking you. But also your mobile network provider could be also tracking you, and potentially always has been.