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- xTRUMANx, on 11/19/2007, -75/+269Sad to see some people still defending Apple after a clear invasion of privacy.
- clickmyface, on 11/19/2007, -29/+165Yes, because you and the blogger are experts. Let me help you both out!
1) IMEI stands for "International Mobile Equipment Identity", the number both physically and digitally marked on all GSM and UTSM devices.
2) This number was built into GSM/UTSM spec for the sole purpose of both allowing and denying a device access to a service.
3) If you pay for a service, you can connect, if you did not, or if you reported your phone stolen, your IMEI number will be blocked.
4) By running this checksum on their server, Apple is able to verify that you are using a service you are entitled to.
5) There is zero evidence that Apple is keeping your IMEI number and your stock tracking habits together for whatever "evil" reasons you're hoping for. - DirtySnachez, on 11/19/2007, -63/+179If MS did this, there would be massive global uproar. Luckily apple only has a few teen fashionista users, who dont care about privacy.. as long as their bling is shinier than yours.
- PATSCRU, on 11/19/2007, -47/+120welcome to fanboyism...steve jobs could take a ***** on some fanboy's mom's chest, and the guy would take a picture of it and blog about how amazing it is.
- keiterk, on 11/19/2007, -2/+63This is interesting to hear -- and I noticed something similar in OS 10.5 (Leopard):
For those of you who don't know what Little Snitch is, it tracks connections that any software makes to the internet (i.e. to "phone home") and allows you to block those connections. Imagine my surprise when I opened Calculator.app the other day and Little Snitch popped up asking if I wanted to block a connection that Calculator.app was attempting to make to "wu-calculator.apple.com". After looking through Calculator.app's source code, I figured out that it shares a little bit of code with the iPhone stuff... I'm seeing:
http://wu-calculator.apple.com/dgw?imei=APPLE&appt ...
Does anyone else notice the word IMEI in there? Yeah. That's what I thought. This could have bad implications -- but I believe that wu.apple.com may not be tracking us; I think that it may be providing support to applications needing dynamic conversion with changing ratios. Right below that IMEI line I found:
X-Client-ID%iApplication SupportCalculatorFinancialRates.xmlUpdate of currency conversion rates failed: %@
Which makes it look like apple is using it to do conversion stuff. But the fact that they use an IMEI is strange... unless they use it to determine where your phone is registered to give you the default conversion in your currency... Eh, or they could just be evil. - macamatition, on 11/19/2007, -12/+69man...I'm all out of tin I'll just have to use bronze foil... :(
- ronaldpoi, on 11/19/2007, -7/+64This makes me think... Could other phones do the same thing?
- thomas, on 11/19/2007, -13/+66"And did you know you actually consented to this gross invasion of privacy?"
If it is in the eula then it's not a secret that they are gathering information. If you care that much maybe you should actually read the agreement before you use the product dumb asses.
PS: I don't own a single Apple product so you can't just call me a fan boy. - f4nt0m4s, on 11/19/2007, -22/+70If this was about Microsoft tracking information this would have 1000 diggs and there would be 400 comments along the lines of "***** m$" and "bill gates sucks."
Personally, I don't feel that I have ANY privacy when I do anything on my phone. Maybe this is the tin foil hat talking, but a cell phone is a big tracking tool for the man, and somehow I doubt Apple is the first company to monitor their users internet usage. On the other hand, Apple users are huge pussies and they need to stand up for stuff like this. - apolloae, on 11/19/2007, -7/+49Was the whole "you can't buy one with anything but a credit card" thing not enough of a giveaway?
- Osirus1156, on 11/19/2007, -5/+40No, Google dosent do that. The Adsense program does, and it dosent read it per say, it just scans it for key words.
- inactive, on 11/19/2007, -0/+33Its time to do massive Http gets with fake imei codes.
- Lemon, on 11/19/2007, -7/+38A lot of networks already do this...
- bluemist, on 11/19/2007, -24/+54It's really hard to point out to blinded Apple loyalists that there's something invasive about the company doing this. For the next comments that I will see on this story, I expect them fanboys to make any of the following comments/excuses/explanations:
- "...but but (insert company here) is doing the same thing..."
- "...knowing IMEI can't hurt anyone..."
- "...damm you MS..."
- "...this is for customer satisfaction..."
- "...no Apple is a good company and I trust them with my personal information..."
- "...it's a bug/old code, should be gone by the next firmware update..." - tico24, on 11/19/2007, -4/+32Except that the iPhone ISN'T only in America so far.
- ThinkBox, on 11/19/2007, -10/+37fanboys just put on black turtle necks and stick their heads in the sand.
I generally put on boxers and sit on my couch and watch cooking shows. Meh. - cyberdork, on 11/19/2007, -3/+30FTA: "Any attempts to modify the URL to exclude the IMEI information will not allow you to retrieve any information in the “Stocks” and “Weather” apps."
So what IMEI is the Stocks and Weather widget sending from my iPod touch then? - banmaster, on 11/19/2007, -12/+37Just so long as it was embossed with an apple logo.
- cleverboy, on 11/19/2007, -4/+28You can be certain other phones are doing the same thing... especially if you're using Verizon CDMA... at that point, everything that you do on the Internet is being recorded, and the IP address assigned to you can be matched to the time for which it was leased to you. A unique identifier isn't really necessary if the phone doesn't have WiFi. If your phone DOES have WiFi, then the question becomes... how do they support services to you if they don't know that you're an active customer?
I guess they could have gotten round this differently by encrypting the IMEI number, but ultimately, that number sits on the back of your phone no matter what, so encrypting it doesn't really do much security-wise, and... as Apple needs to match it against their database in the interests of providing service, once "matching" is necessary, it wouldn't take much for them to decode the IMEI string based on an encrypted match with their clear-text IMEI (like any MD5 lookup available on the web).
So... YES, I can see how Apple would need to do this. Going off of EDGE network access would be stupid with WiFi. The only thing they could have done is gone out of their way to HIDE what they were doing, by note using tokens called "IMEI" or some such. The main question, is whether they are simply using a valid IMEI to provide service, or whether they cross-matching your personal data using your IMEI.
This is more a QUESTION than an INDICTMENT.
Tin foil hats. - doctordbx, on 11/19/2007, -12/+36He'd scoop up the ***** and freeze it for all time too.
- srg13, on 11/19/2007, -6/+27I'm really sick of this "If Microsoft were doing this" crap. Do you even know what an IMEI is? It's sent out every time you use the GSM network anyway....
"The IMEI number is used by the GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used to stop a stolen phone from accessing the network."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imei ) - mayonaise15, on 11/19/2007, -4/+24Read this before jumping to conclusions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMEI
- ToscaDisco, on 11/19/2007, -6/+26The number isn't big enough to be an IMEI - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imei
- Spuy767, on 11/19/2007, -11/+30Sensationalist. Apple already knows your IMEI as they sold you the ***** phone, and you had to use it to activate.
- timmerk15, on 11/19/2007, -0/+19Calculator contacts wu.apple.com to get the latest currency conversion rates. Stop thinking that every internet connection is some conspiracy.
- MenthiX, on 11/19/2007, -5/+23That's comparable to how almost every webserver on earth logs your IP and they can see what you did on their site.
I'm no apple fanboy (i don't own any apple product or installed any of their software), but this has nothing todo with spying / secrecy / privacy. - jasondefaoite, on 11/19/2007, -6/+22Hang on a second, points 1-3 are correct. However, there is no need for apple to have the IMEI number. This number is tracked by the telco providing the cellular service, and this is done when the phone connects to the cellular service.
So if this is purely about blocking stolen phones, how does apple having this information help? Oh dear, the phone I just stole can't access my stocks information!. Wake the hell up. There is NO need for Apple to have this information, and it is an invasion of privacy. - REBELinBLUE, on 11/19/2007, -1/+16I'm no fan of the iPhone but I'll tell you why I sometimes digg down people saying negative things about the iPhone. Because half the time they then feel the need to attack everyone who uses an Apple product by ending their posts with comments such as "This proves that all Apple users are idiots" or as above "On the other hand, Apple users are huge pussies and they need to stand up for stuff like this."
- knightboat, on 11/19/2007, -0/+14Same. As bad as some Apple fanboys can be, the anti-Apple crowd is sometimes far worse.
It's just a technology company, guys. - DirtySnachez, on 11/19/2007, -5/+19I dont think they have much need for tracking 'tards.
- pgillan, on 11/19/2007, -4/+16Based on the url shown in the hex editor in the image, it appears that Apple is only tracking that you're using the stock application, not which stocks you are actually looking at. But when you connect to Yahoo to get stock quotes, you're making a plaintext, insecure request anyway, so theoretically, anyone could see what stocks you're looking at. Not that it matters, it's not like you're sending detailed information about your stock portfolio; it's public data.
- Lemon, on 11/19/2007, -6/+18A lot of networks already track your IMEI regardless of whether you bought the phone from them or not. They can tell you the IMEI of the phone you last made a call from with your SIM. Does it open a tin foil hat issue when it's the manufacturer tracking this info also?
- davidlitts, on 11/19/2007, -3/+15grammar really isn't your thing.
- triskele, on 11/19/2007, -0/+12You need Tin to make Bronze. Everyone knows that.
- w3torg, on 11/19/2007, -5/+16http://www.joetech.com/2007/11/19/how-to-protect-y ...
- rebrad, on 11/19/2007, -4/+15If Apple does it there must be a good reason and is for our own good.
- Flashman, on 11/19/2007, -0/+11Interesting. I tested, and it doesn't happen in 10.4 - must be one of the 300 new 'features'.
- joerick, on 11/19/2007, -0/+11Ok, lets go over that one again. This string is found within Apple's (Desktop) Calculator.app :
http://wu-calculator.apple. com/dgw?imei=APPLE&apptype=finance
(ignore the space i need it to stop digg truncating the url)
doesn't anyone see it yet? Perhaps, just perhaps, imei is an acronym in the calculator API standing for something else? Why would it be part of the desktop version of Calculator.app? Unbelievable that people jump to conclusions so quickly.
Somebody needs to grab some HTTP traffic from a wireless network when an iPhone does this to prove anything. - TiceHH, on 11/19/2007, -3/+13The IMEI number is used by the GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used to stop a stolen phone from accessing the network. Or in Apples case to prevent other phones to use their services. I guess it's not such a big deal at all to do that.
- barc0001, on 11/19/2007, -0/+10Blackbriar
- scoobycarolan, on 11/19/2007, -6/+15Who F-ing cares. If you’re dumb enough to save your stock trading habits on yahoo.com, who cares if Apple has the IMEI of your phone. Jackasses, its all or nothing. You think yahoo doesn’t know who you are and where you live?
Think about it. - daizaru, on 11/19/2007, -11/+20Sometimes I think if it was ever proved that apple directly funded terrorism, there would be people who would be like "Well it's Apple, they must have had a good reason". I know I am being extreme (for effect, don't believe that), but it seems like a weekly event that something bad about the iPhone comes out and anyone who speaks out against apple is dugg down into oblivion.
They might not have majority market share, they may have a better OS then windows... but more and more they make themselves look lest trustworthy in my eyes. - mrchin, on 11/19/2007, -5/+14How does that prove that any IMEI is being tracked. Just because that is that string in a web lookup, doesn't mean that it is extracting your phone's IMEI. Could just be a text string in a lookup. It's only a hex string. To prove it, wouldn't you have to prove that a command is being issued and there is a data flow that checks the radio and forwards the IMEI number itself?
- wolf68, on 11/19/2007, -1/+9IMHO they are just checking if the one requesting market info is an iPhone and not another mobile device... Just to avoid wasting bandwidth.
And what's the point in protecting your IMEI? Your carrier has tons of logs in which your IMEI shows up, even with details about who you called and when... - fLUx1337, on 11/19/2007, -0/+8yawn, so what?
AT&T is also invading your privacy by keeping records of every phone call you make, who too, how long you talked, and backups of all your sms messages!! OMFG!!! - keozen, on 11/19/2007, -8/+16I live in the UK, I have a legal right to use my phone on whatever network I care to use it on. I paid for it, it's mine.
Go for it, track my usage, have fun :) - moonhead, on 11/19/2007, -1/+8People do live outside of America you know.
- davidlitts, on 11/19/2007, -4/+11LOL like an ipod touch, jesus thats ***** rich
- chkdg8, on 11/19/2007, -4/+11Anyone who thinks that the telecommunication companies don't practice this already is truly kidding themselves. The NSA has been evesdropping and collecting data for decades and all forms of communication is compromised, no questions. Anyone interested in this topic can read James Bamford's book, Body Of Secrets. It's actually part 2 of his first book on the NSA entitled Puzzle Palace. Apple's iPhone is nothing new and the only reason that we're talking about this is because of it's popularity. If the phone farts, it'll be national news. The good thing is that most of you are finally realizing that this has been going on for a while. I don't care what network you're on or what cell phone you use, there's no way in hell that the intelligence community will let you slide because you think you're in the clear. Either don't use cell phones, iPhones or just take it with a grain of salt. The subject of massive data collection will never come to an end. The only thing you can do is read about it and inform yourself.
- yabos, on 11/19/2007, -1/+8No, it's imei=%@ which is a format string you can use with NSString stringWithFormat, like the printf function. It replaces %@ with an NSString you pass as an argument.
As to why they are doing it, my guess is that they will be denying access to people who never activated their phones through iTunes. Apple knows all those IMEI numbers and passing them along to their server will let them block all the unlocked iPhones. -
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