When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend
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Apple denies tracking Iphone users
TOY MAKER FOR THE WELL HEELED Apple has claimed that has it has never tracked the location of Iphones, responding to reports that Apple's IOS was tracking users' locations.
Apple erected a questions and answers page in which it said that Iphones are not logging users' locations but are maintaining a database of WiFi hotspots and cell towers around the current location of each device. It adds that some of the cell towers might be more than 100 miles away but the data is needed in order to "rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested".
Apparently locating Iphones by using GPS can take several minutes and by storing this data, Apple can bring that time down to mere seconds. The cache of cell tower and WiFi hotspot locations is crowd-sourced, with Apple admitting that the data is not encrypted but is 'protected'. The cache is also backed up on Itunes, and depending on the user's preferences it might be encrypted.
Apple categorically denied that the geo-tagged WiFi hotspot and cell tower data can be used to locate Iphone users. The firm said, "This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data."
Apple also admitted that due to a software bug, even if Iphone users turn off location services, the device will continue to send WiFi and cell tower data. However Apple said that a software update that will appear in the next few weeks will resolve this issue, reducing the size of the crowd-sourced cache and deleting it entirely if location services are turned off.
Aside from the impending software update, Apple outlined its plans to collect other data saying, "Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years."
Apple might have put something of a lid on its storing of WiFi and cell tower data but the revelation that it plans to collect traffic data could just further raise the ire of privacy conscious Iphone users. µ
Tags: Apple
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Steve Jobs also denied buying a new liver on the black market, but he mysteriously got moved to the head of the transplant queue.
I tend to think anything nefarious that Apple denies is probably what they've done, if it's not obviously impossible for them to have done it.
Just a reminder that MS for instance classifies HD serial numbers as 'anonymous', and many companies also claim MAC numbers are 'anonymous', and they both are, it's just coincidental that in another db those things are linked to your name/account but in on itself they are merely numbers..right?
What I'm saying is that companies have just as warped a view about 'anonymous' as they have about what constitutes privacy and you should keep that in mind when you hear them talk, their words are not defined as we would define things.
That's a common issue these day incidentally, certain groups defining the same words in a completely different and often even opposite way and the press just assuming it's all the same meaning, which is ironic since the press itself has their own slant on the meaning of often used words that is at odds with the rest of society.
According to an article in hardocp.com the tracking was in an applied patent.
check it out
Apple would patent farting if no-one else does.
Don't sound like no Bug to me....
Claiming a software bug is a convenient excuse. Apple is caught with its pants down. In the advertising-obsessed American commericial world, selling location, location, location to advertisers can be lucrative. Just imagine a pop-up iPhone/iPad ad for the nearest McDonalds when the kids are screaming from hunger in the car.
Privacy of location of the citizenry be damned according to Apple and most everyone else serving up ads 24/7
Next thing you know, the police will pay for all the GPS location info and use it as a convenient excuse to dole out speeding tickets. Oops! That's already been done in The Netherlands... Ben Myers
I hope they find my life more interesting than I do.
Either road transport or radio network communication come to mind.
Presumably then they are going to log your phone's location and whether it is physically moving fast or slow.
An iPhone user walking therefore could cause other users to divert from a good road because it appears to be congested. Ah, but this is for the U.S. Who walks? With their iPhone?
Alternatively, you are tracked for road traffic analysis only when you are running the road traffic app - as long as it isn't the same road app that a pedestrian would use. (If they haven't already run all the pedestrians out of town on, as is traditional, a rail. I wonder what that means.)
"The cache of cell tower and WiFi hotspot locations is crowd-sourced"
Sounds to me like it is basically public data gathered by the public for Apple (since its now avowed goal is to bring down response time, which makes Apple's product look better). So sure, it makes things more user-friendly, but the issue had to made public before Apple even tried to patch it with more privacy-respecting measures.
Well, at least there is a patch announced. That is better than some. Except that, now that this particular cockroach is scurrying back to the shade, Apple has made itself another fine publicity item with the traffic logging thing.
Good thing there's no such thing as bad publicity, eh ?