As you might have heard, it turns out that the iPhone keeps a record of everywhere you’ve been. It’s been doing this since last summer. It’s kind of creepy, but also kind of cool, so I downloaded the iPhone tracker program by Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden that turns the data on your iPhone into a map. Here’s my map (click to embiggen):

Here’s my map for just the northeast:

I think the tracking works by bouncing signals off cell towers or something, so there are some inaccuracies (I haven’t been to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or central New York State off the I-87 corridor recently). But as I mentioned last week, I’ve gone on an abnormally high number of trips in the last several months, so there’s a lot on here. My map reflects vacations, airport transfers, my Amtrak trip to Charlottesville, Virginia, my NJ Transit commute to and from work, our car ride to Montreal, etc.

There are two weird things, though:

(1) It shows my phone as having been in Las Vegas. I haven’t been to Las Vegas in years. But when I press the time-lapse arrow at the bottom of the screen, I see that my phone was in Vegas the same week that I bought it at an Apple Store in NYC. It must have been in Vegas before being shipped to NYC; there must be a warehouse in or near Vegas where they store and test new iPhones before shipping them around the country.

(2) I was in Alberta, Canada last summer, but that’s not reflected on the map. I think that’s because I had my phone turned off or didn’t use it or something, because I didn’t want to roam and use data. But I was in Canada again a few days ago (Montreal), and I still had roaming turned off, but that data still shows up. I must have done something differently but I can’t remember what.

Anyway… creepy, but cool.