Big Brother and the iPhone

Eidac.de, the home of smcFanControl (essential for keeping hot-running MacBook Pros at a reasonable tempoerature), has an interesting post. It’s actually two months old, but some of us are slow.

He questions, “Is Big Brother listening in on my iPhone Apps?” after discovering a third-party tool for iPhone developers that will send information like the application’s time started/stopped, UUID (globally-unique identifier for your phone), and the latitude/longitude. Based on his analysis, nearly a third of the applications he’s installed are making use of it.

An interesting debate started in the comments section, though, ranging from the application being dubbed spyware to a comparison with Google Analytics. I buy both arguments, really. But mostly, it’s yet another reminder that the iPhone is a black box unless you jailbreak it: you can’t even tell if this library is there without a jailbroken iPhone. Nor can you bulk-delete thousands of text messages. The temptation is growing.

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