“In contrast with iOS and Android, Microsoft says that its Windows Phone OS doesn’t create any persistent on-phone record of where you’ve been. That’s not to say that the company doesn’t collect the information at all^aEUR”but the large location caches found on handsets with competing operating systems aren’t found on Microsoft-powered phones.”
Well, that’s interesting. People are making a fuss over Android and iOS storing that information on the phone itself.
But If I’m reading this correctly, the reason WP doesn’t store it locally is that they *do* transmit the information to their servers. That’s much more concerning than a phone caching data that never leaves the phone…
Well, with the iPhone, it does leave the phone, unencrypted by default, and gets stored on your computer. As far as I’ve seen, it hasn’t been determined one way or the other if Apple is receiving the info (Maybe it has been determined and I just haven’t seen it).
At least Microsoft is on the up-and-up about it, going into detail about what it’s used for. Also, with the WP7 phones, it does get turned off when location services are turned off, unlike the iPhone, which records it whenever cell service is enabled.
I think I would worry about that info being carried on your phone, since it becomes available to law enforcement in even a minor arrest, while they need to jump through more hoops to get Microsoft to turn it over, but the phone companies already have that info, too.
Either way, all this phone tracking makes me a little nervous, but the only thing that surprises me about it is the extent that Apple does it, and their lack of concern about it.
Android retains a small, i.e. finite (50 for cell towers, 200 for wifi) amount of locations, in something called a cache! If you enable the feature.
iOS stores all data ad infinitum, with no option to disable.
It’s a shame they get grouped together.
50 cell towers has a valid reason. If you are traveling moving between towers you will normally have less risk of a broken call connect to towers you have already connected to. Than some new tower you have never connected to. Lack of this tells me that WP7 is going to be a complete crud phone to use in areas with unstable towers. It would also be nice if this happens to be a list rating the towers.
The tower id alone really don’t tell you much just that you were in range of that tower at some time. Does android also store time? Same with wifi. Time of last connect can give some traceablity.
200 wifi seams a little large.
Strange people make out that a lack of a particular feature is a bad thing.
Now big thing missed is iOS devices were not turning off there GPS units so eating through battery life. For sure bad.
iOS recording everything forever there is no operational reason other than to track a person todo this. So For sure bad.
Another thing not mentioned is a factory reset on an android device clears the cache. This is what you should do when selling a device. OSi factory reset missed the file. Defect or intentional is the question in OSi Factory reset.
Android please just give us some better controls over it. Other wise what Android is doing is fine since it did clear when factor reset as you should do when selling or transferring the device. Simple controls like clearing cache. Changing the number to cache.
What are you talking about? Phones and relay towers don’t bond like chums, it makes no difference for your connection if your phone ever connected to a relay before or not.
That being said, relay switching is a mature and well understood technique, deployed for decades now in “dumb” mobile and car phones. If a phone does or does not save relay point data has no impact on its ability to make connections or on the quality thereof.
The data in discussion here is only useful in relation to location-based services or retrospectivly determining the location of the phone. And that’s something you can do, probably even better than with the phone data, with the connection data of the relay points alone. But unlike the data stored on your phone only the service provider and law enforcement agencies can access this data under certain provisions. That’s the beef.