Apple denies tracking iPhone and iPad users’ locations
April 28th, 2011 - 4:58 pm ICT by ANILondon, April 28 (ANI): Apple has denied secretly tracking the location of its iPhone and 3G iPad users amid a growing scandal over a hidden program that stores the data.
In a website posting, the company said it had never tracked user location and had no plans to do so in future.
Security researchers claimed to have found a hidden file on the devices containing a record of everywhere they had been.
Some users managed to extract the data and plot it on maps.
More than a week after the issue came to public attention, Apple released an online question and answer document.
“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,” the BBC quoted it as saying.
The document also addresses the fact - as some users discovered - that data going back months and even years was being stored.
“It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly,” said Apple. (ANI)
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