The problem is that the farther out you get from large cities and the more distance you travel, the less these things matter. While my life in San Francisco would be a bit hard to read from just this data, a recent trip to Texas was logged in exacting (and easily readable) detail as my phone passed from tower to tower.

We've got good news and bad news. The good news is that at the moment there's no indication that Apple is collecting this data from your phone remotely.

The bad news is that it would be fairly simple for Apple, or anyone else who was interested for that matter, to access the files from your phone or from the backed-up iPhone data on your computer. Hopefully Apple will take steps to close this security hole and provide some answers to why this data was being stored in the first place but, as smartphones become more and more location-aware, these . The files are unencrypted and relatively easy to locate.

Just about the only security they had at all is that, up until today, almost no one knew these files existed. That security is now gone.