Apple tracks your iphone...

i bet all manufacturers do it, just apple have been found out.

they can check all your credit card/ bank cards etc through the chip (not apple )

stay off the grid man. a great book is the traveller by john twelve hawks, about not being tracked by the man

My theory is it's for improving the AGPS function, but only for your device. It's possibly a cache of known cell towers and wifi access points so it doesn't have to redownload them everytime it tries to triangulate from them.

No conspiracy, just a massive brainfart on Apple's part for not encrypting it. If you don't jailbreak your iPhone, and you turn backup encryption on in iTunes, you're perfectly fine.

It's also horribly innacurate. Apparently my phone has been all over North Wales and went to London once.

Storm in a teacup combined with sensationalist journalism

It does, very true, the data is retained within the phone but not in any cached area, so it's not prone to being accessed through a cache based exploit or cache targeted hack. This data is NOT relayed back to Apple or any other parties
When the phone is backed up (in OSX) this data (in SQL format) is backed up into the /Users/user name/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backups/ directory (or 'folder' for the Windoze generation)
The data is retained for 12 months before being overwritten. The data can be accessed, imported and parsed into most SQL compatible viewers and read, however, if you encrypt your iPhone backup the data within the user directory is encrypted and cannot be read

Interestingly enough it also keeps records of all the WAPs I've passed by and connected/not connected to.. remember Wireless has to be enabled on the phone for it to capture this data.
However, reading the tables on my phone was quite enlightening, it doesn't pinpoint where I was exactly, it just shows which cell tower I was polling to at a certain date and time.
It also logged my movements in France over December, but not when I was in South Africa in September, October of last year using the phone with the same O2 SIM I use here.

To be honest the CSPs keep much more detailed records on our movements using the Agilent MLS system that every Telco on the planet has implemented
This can track you down to 3M and keeps records for a decade. Even our local constabularies can access this data from their incident control centres, however a warrant is needed to track real time. MLS data is often used as evidence.
It's also been used by the Iranian government to track down "outlaws" conspiring against the regime by text
How do I know this? Because I was involved in the MLS rollout in 2002/2003

Some other trivia, the NavMan, TomTom and Garmin SatNav units also keep detailed records of your journey, irrespective of whether you were using it to navigate (as in heading to a destination) or not. If it's powered on it will log your coodrinates and average speed
This info was used in a groundbreaking case 3 years back to prove a youngster was not speeding when he was involved in an accident.

So, all you paranoid people out there, get a freakin' grip because you're being watched all the time and if you're a BT broadband user, New Labour approved Phorm (Google that) in 2008 and it's used for a "little more" than just "banner advertising"

Here's an update on the situation...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/27/appl ... g-says-it/