Apple SpyPhone? ‘Secret’ Function Embedded in New iPhones

Apple has made waves with their line of iPhones, and their latest release hit the market with a bang. However, there’s a function hidden inside the devices that’s causing concern among quite a few people who think it could be exploited for malicious purposes.
According to MailOnline, iPhones that are running iOS 7 and above track your every single move, then keep them in a log file to be analyzed by the phone to determine where you live and work. The information that’s recorded includes the time you leave a location, how long you were there, how often you go there, and more.
The Frequent Locations feature was introduced to the phones by Apple a year ago with very little press surrounding it. To date, few people even know of its existence. Access to the program has been buried underneath the layers of menus in the phone’s settings, making it hard to access for someone who doesn’t realize it’s there.
Smartphones have long been able to track their users’ movements, ever since being equipped with GPS chips; however, having it displayed on a map is a first, which Professor Noel Sharkey says is “terrifying.”

“Every place you go, where you shop, where you have a drink – it is all recorded,” he said. “This is a divorce lawyer’s dream. But what horrifies me is that it is so secret. Why did we not know about this?”
The answer is likely because Apple insists that the data is secure and it never leaves the handset without consent, which must be given by selecting the “Improve Maps” option in the settings. However, critics worry that the data could be seized by the government or that a nosy spouse or boss could see it, which could potentially be troublesome.
Sharkey agrees with other critics and thinks that such tracking leaves the door open to abuse by shady characters.
“Apple might promise not to use our location information for advertising. And many of our authorities might be quite benevolent at the moment,” he said. “But if you put that information in someone else’s hands, then it becomes powerful, and in some cases, dangerous.”
Indeed, with the ease in which hackers have been able to recover supposedly deleted photographs of celebrities, one can’t help but wonder how easy it would be for them to zero in on this data? Perhaps your best bet, if you own an iPhone, is to leave the location services off, unless you’re using your GPS for something.
Does this feature concern you, or do you think the phones are secure enough that it won’t matter?