Tech Note: iPhone Tracks Your Every Move

Google has made no secret of the fact that they hope to use their phones to track your activities so that they can better market to you. Maybe you like a local restaurant and go their often. Your phone can track this information and perhaps one day when you're driving by your phone notifies you of a special the restaurant has going. That's the vision that Google has for their phones and marketing.

Knowing this it shouldn't come of a big surprise to find out that the iPhone is tracking all of your movement. You can read a story about it here. What is surprising is that the iPhone doesn't tell you it's doing this or give you an opportunity to opt out. Google apparently does give you an opt out option when you are setting up a new phone. I've got a Palm Pre, not sure whether it's tracking my information or not, and I certainly don't remember a question asking me about this.

It's going to be curious to see how this stuff plays out over time. There are big fights brewing between privacy advocates and Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. At some point we as a culture will have to make a clear decision as to whether or not we are willing to give up our privacy in order for these companies to provide us cheaper services with better marketing. We already do it in grocery stores and drug stores when we sign up for their store discount card, and that data reveals much more about our personal lives than does our locations, so it's hard to believe we won't give in to this intrusion as well.