Apple Plans Update To Resolve iPhone Tracking Issue
Thursday, April 28th, 2011The story about iPhone tracking just won’t die — and may not for some time. In fact, it may just spark a whole new wave of privacy suits and could even cause consumers to rethink location-based services like Foursquare and GPS.
Apple is under fire from consumers and lawmakers alike over the way its iPhone collects data. However, Apple continues to deny that its device is tracking a user’s actual location. Nevertheless, the company is moving to slash the amount of data the device stores. The company also issued an Apple Q&A on Location Data.
“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. “Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a sound bite.”
Apple Drills the Message
Apple very meticulously took the time to explain that the iPhone is not logging a user’s location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers around a user’s current location, some of which may be more than 100 miles away from the iPhone, to help the device quickly and accurately calculate its location when requested.
The company explained that calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. The iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hot-spot and cell-tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hot-spot and cell-tower data when GPS is not available, such as indoors or in basements.
“These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hot-spot and cell-tower data that is generated by tens of millions…
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