Lawsuit against Apple over location tracking

2nd May, 2011 by adina
Tags: Apple, GPS, Mobile

Location tracking on iPhone and 3G iPad recently led to a lawsuit filed against Apple, according to Bloomberg. A federal complaint has been filed by two customers in Tampa, Florida, claiming privacy invasion as well as computer fraud. Additional details of this case are supposed to be revealed in the near future.

The problem resides in a tracking file in Apple’s iOS 4, which records information about a person’s location history and seems to go back as far as the introduction of the firmware last summer. Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, has denied active tracking and has tried to direct criticism to the Android platform of Google, also accused of violating privacy. However, Google claims that there is no archiving of any location data in Android, without consent.

It seems that the effect of the iOS threat is exaggerated. The tracking file is not protected, but reading it needs direct access or an improbable remote exploit. The file is supposed to generate data based on celltowers and therefore the content is imprecise. Consequently, that content would be of little use for eventual stalking or robbery.

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