Apple has responded to claims that it tracks the whereabouts of iPhone users and denied that it keeps track of user location information.
Reports over the last few days claimed that Apple’s iconic smartphone was tracking the locations of its users as they travelled around. According to early reports this information was then transferred to the user’s computer when the iPhone was connected to iTunes. Subsequent reports suggested that both Windows and Android devices did the same.
Apple has remained quiet on the issue, with the exception of one short email from CEO Steve Jobs to someone on the MacRumors website who asked why Android devices don’t track movement.. "Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false."
Now Apple has provided a somewhat lengthier response, and denied that a user’s exact location could ever be garnered from this data. Confusion about these services is behind this scare, Apple reckons: "Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date." Which is one of the reason it is looking to set the record straight.
"Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so," the company said in a Q&A on its site. "The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested."
"Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. IPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available," Apple continues.
Apple denied that the collected data could be used to track a user’s exact location: "This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data." The cache held on the device can be encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes, the firm added.
However Apple did confirm that a couple of bugs remain in its iOS operating system; one that results in a year’s worth of location data being stored on the phone and a second which means the iPhone sometimes continues to update Wi-Fi and cell tower data even if location services are turned off. Apple will release of software update in a few week that should remove these bugs.
Interestingly the company also confirmed that it is working on an improved traffic/mapping service. "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," the Q&A said. Gadget website Engadget speculated that this may mean a shift away from Google Maps to its own version.
