iOSmap – Anybody else downloaded this (free) app?

Bit limited perhaps as you can’t plan routes etc, but to pinpoint a location or just look at mapping of an area you don’t a paper map for I reckon it’s ok.

I have now. Looks pretty useful. Thanks!

It gives you a Grid Ref for your current position on the Info page – which might be quite handy too.

good call, seems a bit slow and clunky but OS maps is something I really want on my phone. Hadn’t seen that anywhere.

is it just on wifi or can you do it GPRS/3G ?

Works fine on 3G here.

excellent 🙂

cool. based on the openspace platform by the looks of it.

hope it doesnt get too popular, the OS limits the amount of maps any developer can serve a day.

thanks for the tip-off. Just downloaded it. Now all we need is a proper OS mapping app like Viewranger for the Mac/iPhone and we’ll be laughing. Satmap have promised a Mac version of their Satlink system for their Active 10 GPS unit, so that’s a good alternative, and waterproof.

It is good isn’t it.

Satmap have promised a Mac version of their Satlink system for their Active 10 GPS unit, so that’s a good alternative

Believe it when you see it.

Satmap apparently consider it a priority. There was a thread on a gps forum where they had been asked about a Linux version, and they replied maybe, but the Mac version is a priority at the moment, so I live in hope.

cool i shall give that a download, see what it’s like on my touch

Probably slightly less useful without GPS to be honest deus.

it is indeed, keeps resetting to near Leicester.

ach weel. didn’t cost anything to try though 🙂

it works well on my touch and will target your location reasonably closely if you can find a wireless signal….which begs the question…how?

If your using a public wifi point, like a phonebox, then I guess the location of that is known.
If you’re using your own then it will depend if your ISP supports location awareness.

The Google Maps app does the same thing.

**** all use if you’re somewhere you actually need an OS map tho.

tells me not supported on touch when I try download.

What version of the Touch software do you have installed speaker?
(it says in the Setting/About menu)

If your using a public wifi point, like a phonebox, then I guess the location of that is known.
If you’re using your own then it will depend if your ISP supports location awareness.

yeah, i’m happy with the public wifi, if I use mcdonalds it shows me right on top of the building. Private stuff is far more dubious though.

Are you saying ISP’s will give out house addresses to people who associate with your access point?

Are you saying ISP’s will give out house addresses to people who associate with your access point?

I think (and I’m guessing here) that apps like Google Maps and that OSMap thing try to match your IP address to your location.

http://www.seomoz.org/ip2loc
http://www.iplocationfinder.com/
http://www.hostip.info/

Not always accurate though. I always seem to get London or Sheffield and I’m no where near either. YMMV.

nope, it’s not using those methods. All those tag me at my companies ISP headquarters. Which is quite interesting, because it appears to be the same place if I’m connecting direct from my broadband and when I’m connecting through my company VPN.

Anyway, it’s not that. It’s been suggested that there’s a WIFI database, skyhook, http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/ but if that’s what they do use then the touch either has hardware inside it that they’re not telling us about or there is private data being leaked to that skyhook.

or of course my access point is on their database, and that hardly seems feasible.

Well it’s a third party app so I don’ think there is anything sinister going on unless they are happy to publish it in a public API.

One thought: just because you are connected to your own wi-fi doesn’t stop the app finding out ALL the Wi-Fis that you can see and checking if any of them have locations associated with them.

Here is how the Google Maps wi-fi location works:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-location-now-with-wi-fi.html

I’ve used google maps on my iphone to locate me and on 2g it even “knew” I was way out of the way up here in Aviemore-land. No good for “proper” navigation, but interesting to know how it did it?

I’ve used google maps on my iphone to locate me and on 2g it even “knew” I was way out of the way up here in Aviemore-land. No good for “proper” navigation, but interesting to know how it did it?

Location is much easier to do with a phone. It just triangulates off the cell tower signals. Contrary to “police dramas” on Tv this takes seconds.

Stop trying to reduce my paranoia! 😉 All it can gather from adjacant access points is the name (if broadcast) and mac address. Again, this is localised information that without a direct scan they wouldn’t know. The API only has to provide a location, the developers using it don’t get to see how it comes by that address.

And the googlemaps API link says this…
“To protect user privacy, the Gears Geolocation API server does not record user location. However, third party sites may do so, and we recommend that users only allow web sites they trust to access their location.”

Which does suggest there might be some data leakage going on. Even if the API code is visible, the database is being populated from a stream of data that the developers will never get to see….

itunes knows my home address……

Now you’re getting proper paranoid.

MAC addresses are globally unique so it could be using them to do a location look up.

The “Gears Geolocation API” is the one provided by Google Maps, not by Apple.
That statement means “we don’t record your location but if you go to a another website that uses our API then we can’t promise that they won’t”. No data leakage there.

The iPhone SDK is downloadable from http://developer.apple.com/iphone/ if you really want to check it out.

Okay from Apple:

For iPod touch with Maps, the Maps application provides your approximate location using information based on your proximity to known Wi-Fi networks (when on and available). The more accurate the available information, the smaller the circle identifying your position on the map. The feature is not available in all areas. Known Wi-Fi networks are predominantly in urban areas. In order to provide your location, data is collected in a form that does not personally identify you. If you do not want such data collected, do not enable the feature. Not enabling the feature will not impact the functionality of your iPod touch.
— http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_touch (at the bottom in the small print)

Likewise this wiki shows the actual data request the Google Geolocation API. It is also just a list of nearby cell and wi-fi towers.

Damn he probably can’t hear me for the tinfoil 😉

Sorry, I was out taping 802.1x DOS Bombs to cell masts.

MAC addresses are globally unique so it could be using them to do a location look up.

yes thank you Graham, you know I’m in the security game 😉 There can be no possible way that MAC address locations can be known without a billion devices all reporting back to mother,

The “Gears Geolocation API” is the one provided by Google Maps, not by Apple.

yes, and many users report the google one to be wholey inaccurate whereas the apple DB is quite often bang on the money.

I still think we’re on very sketchy ground, particularly where, as in my case at home, the only accessible access point (to my touch) is mine. There are about 3 more visible but they’re all encrypted and all of the access points are private, they are not known wifi networks. Could it be that by saying ‘yes’ to ‘Can we use your current location as the default’ question, I am permitting them to

a. Gather information about access points in my local area
and
b. Use the information that only apple can know, to be used to enforce the database.

For example, no doubt at least one of my neighbours will also have itunes. In fact, I’ll guarantee Keith across the road has it. So now we have two house addresses, two access point mac addresses attached to those addresses and a touch which can see them both. Without a third to trangulate it’s going to plot a straight line between the two houses and locate the virtual access point based on signal strength so we’d expect the location to be nearer my house than Keith’s along that line.

Where do you think it places it? Go on, guess.

Skyhook actually drive through most major cities to build their database of access points. I have a feeling they may have some clever update – based on when a new mac address is searched for, looking at what other addresses that person has looked at recently to be able to add the new one to their database. Their back end database is bigger than a big thing – although it supposedly compresses very well.

Even if the way they do it is rather a brute force approach, it’s quite a neat bit of technology isn’t it.

Joe

Hmmm can’t decide if you are one of the most paranoid people I’ve met or your just winding me up.

How would iTunes know your home address? At best it knows your credit card billing address.
Try changing that or logging in with a friends iTunes account.

Or switch off your wi-fi router and see if it still gets a fix.

I just tried our Touch and it says it can’t get a fix on our location, despite being in range of 3 different WiFi signals, including my own and being attached to my PC which has iTunes running. Why’s that?

They do probably use that Skyhook database that you linked to earlier. So it could just be that you live somewhere suburban so you are in the Skyhook database. Check the coverage map on their website. I live in the sticks and I don’t seem to be (might add myself tho).

AND….

If they really wanted to sneakily update the Skyhook database then they would just get every iPhone to report its GPS location and all the WiFi signals it can see on a regular basis.

No unreliable credit card info required or iTunes required.
And any modern smart phone could do this. 😯

You definately have to have an internet connection for it to work.
I’ll mess around with itunes and see. However, skyhook…

“To develop this database, Skyhook has deployed drivers to survey every single street, highway, and alley in tens of thousands of cities and towns worldwide, scanning for Wi-Fi access points and plotting their precise geographic locations.”

Sounds very expensive (although probably the most likely scenario), cheaper to write some software to trawl the apple db for mac addresses and addresses.

I live right in a blue area if that’s a mapped area but the scale can’t (or won’t) get close enough to see what that means

Apple probably have a direct link to GCHQ, have spotted this thread and have removed you from the database in the hope that your lack of location will debase my theory.

“AND….

If they really wanted to sneakily update the Skyhook database then they would just get every iPhone to report its GPS location and all the WiFi signals it can see on a regular basis.

No unreliable credit card info required or iTunes required.
And any modern smart phone could do this.“

Yep, that sounds pretty plausible, certainly a lot easier than having someone drive round in a van.

cheaper to write some software to trawl the apple db for mac addresses and addresses.

True, but I’d want to know what Apple were doing storing the MAC address of my router in the first place, since it wasn’t information I offered them or information they require to perform their business.

Yep, that sounds pretty plausible, certainly a lot easier than having someone drive round in a van.

But they are obviously not doing that, cos I’m not in the DB (despite sitting here with an iPhone and a iPod Touch) and their DB is waaay too patchy. If they were doing it that way then they would have near perfect coverage of anywhere that has someone with a smart phone.

Maybe I should patent that. Ooops too late. Discussed it in a public forum now.
Someone archive this thread so we can prove “prior art” when Skyhook try to patent.

True, but I’d want to know what Apple were doing storing the MAC address of my router in the first place, since it wasn’t information I offered them or information they require to perform their business.

which is precisely my suspicion.

[edit] It’s freely available information after all.

Well raise a request with Apple under the Data Protection act and see what information they have about you. It may include your PCs MAC address, but I seriously doubt it includes the MAC address of your router.

Be interesting to see though.

he he, that plan would last about five seconds before apple say, “go on then, apply your UK based data protection laws against us”.

There’s nothing over here to force apple/skyhook to present their database for perusal, they’d argue that it’s freely available information that can be gathered by anyone in the street, and win. It’s hard enough making big (American) companies adhere to international laws where serious crimes have been committed. Trust me, we’ve been there and tried.

Ahh but if they are actually linking WiFi router MAC to a billing address then that isn’t freely available information, is it?