Is Apple collecting your iPhone usage data?
It looks like Apple is tracking iPhone users data i ncluding IMEI number, IP address and stock quote preferences (amongst other things) through a hidden string in the Weather.app and Stocks.app iPhone applications.
Context & Ripple Effects
The finding traces to UNEASYsilence's exclusive, published the same day, which presented purported proof that a hidden string inside Apple's bundled [[entity/weather.app|Weather]] and [[entity/stocks.app-iphone|Stocks]] apps transmits the device's IMEI, its IP address and even users' stock-quote preferences back to Apple. Because both apps ship preinstalled on every iPhone, the discovery touches the entire installed base rather than a subset of users who opted into anything.
It lands two days after a confirmed demo showed an iPhone being driven from a terminal by a root-privilege program installed through nothing more than a webpage, exposing the device's mail and other data stores. Together, the two items frame a consistent late-2007 critique of the iPhone: a tightly controlled platform whose first-party software nonetheless phones home without telling users.
First-order effects
- Every iPhone running the bundled Weather.app and Stocks.app is sending its IMEI and IP address to Apple without any disclosure or consent prompt, making this a first-party telemetry question rather than a third-party app problem.
- Apple's brand positioning — built heavily on advertising its promise to customers, per the ad run just before this broke — now collides with evidence of silent identifier collection on its flagship product.
Second-order effects
- Security researchers and the jailbreak community, already energized by the root-privilege webpage exploit demonstrated on November 16, gain concrete evidence for auditing what else Apple's bundled binaries transmit.
- Carriers selling the iPhone face customer questions about device-level data flows they neither control nor disclosed, pushing handset-telemetry transparency onto carrier support agendas.
Third-order effects
- If silent IMEI-level collection proves standard practice among platform owners, the industry heads toward consent frameworks and disclosure rules governing hardware identifiers — the permission-boundary questions that mobile platforms have largely deferred so far.
- First-party telemetry establishes a template other handset makers can copy quietly, since the iPhone's market position makes its data practices de facto reference behavior for competitors.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are embedding silent usage telemetry into first-party apps, setting up the identifier-consent and disclosure battles that will define mobile privacy policy.