Steve Jobs might have denied that iOS performs tracking illegally, and his stand is backed by Apple (naturally) by stating on their website that “the iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it is 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.”
According to a couple of British security researchers, they published a report last week which claims that Apple’s iOS in the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad will actually keep a record of the device’s location history where possible, copying such data over to the user’s computer whenever the mobile device is connected. This has raised concerns and fears that the iPhone could actually report users’ movements to Apple, or even worse, that a user’s privacy could be jeopardised should the file be accessed by a malicious third party apart from the handset’s owner.
There is a silver lining in this apparent dark cloud – Apple claims that the amount of data that the iPhone stores is actually a bug, and they plan to fix it shortly. Is that just a smokescreen, or is it the real deal? Unless we are part of the inside team, we won’t really know, but either way we are pleased to know that they are going to make sure this bug is squashed shortly.