Tracking usage in Safari and apps

[Wellsa2012]

We are allowed personal use on our iPhones and iPads at work (work issued). However, it is with no expectation of privacy. Even so, I find myself wondering exactly what information is trackable. Is it naive to think that they can/are probably tracking things like what sites I'm visiting in safari and what apps I'm using, but not so much what I'm doing within apps, or when/how much I'm using those? For example, say I'm watching Hulu or reading in kindle. I know it's just speculation, but I would still be interested in how easily certain things are tracked. Also, if one deletes an app directly from the device, does all the data truly go with it? I'm just curious. I use my equipment within the policy, but I'm not sure I want to advertise personal tastes in music, books, and other preferences. Any thoughts? Thanks!

 

[fury]

They can track as much as with any other device, which is to say that they can see all of the connections being made to the Internet through their network, and perhaps even the contents of those connections (if unencrypted).

Being work issued, depending on how they configured it, they may or may not be able to do things like restrict certain features, monitor settings, and see what apps are installed, and a high level overview like how much data is being used by each app (but not the data itself). If you hook it up to your work computer to back up the device, they can use a backup browser like MobileSyncBrowser to look at the data contained within the backup on your work computer. That's a relatively roundabout way to go about looking at it, but it is technically possible.

http://www.cultofmac.com/161263/20-ways-your-company-can-track-you-using-your-iphone-or-ipad/

When an app is deleted, its documents and data are deleted along with it. It might retain crash logs, and it will record that the app was deleted, so that iTunes doesn't install it right back again when you sync. But it will not keep the documents. Each app keeps that information in its own sandbox when it's set up, and the whole sandbox is deleted when the app is removed. The last backup will still contain the app's data, until the next time you backup.