14 DAY TRIAL // Apple is reiterating its stance that the company has never tracked users’ locations, and doesn’t plan to do so, in a hearing titled ‘Consumer Privacy and Protection in the Mobile Marketplace.’
Appearing before the Senate Consumer Protection, Safety and Insurance subcommittee on Thursday alongside representatives from Google and Facebook, Apple Vice President of Global Affairs, Catherine Novelli, reaffirmed Apple’s stance on tracking its iOS customers:
"Apple does not track users' locations -- Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so," Novelli said.
The issue was raised last month by a couple of security researchers who coded a piece of software that was able to interpret the location data gathered by iOS devices by cell tower and WiFi hot-spot triangulation.
Apple admitted to an error in iOS that caused the data to be interpretable (i.e. was not encrypted), as well as to another bug that allowed said data to be stored for much longer periods of time than necessary.
Whilst preparing a software update to patch these issues up (iOS 4.3.3), Apple maintained its claims that the data was not gathered with the purpose of tracking users’ locations, but rather to be used by applications that offer location-based services.
Despite posting an official statement on the matter as well as openly stating its stance before U.S. regulators earlier this month, senators present at this last meeting continued to express their concerns regarding whether geo-tracking could ever be in accordance with existing legislature.
"I think anyone who uses a mobile device has an expectation of privacy, and sadly that expectation is not always being met," Sen. John Rockefeller IV said during the hearing.
Rockefeller said he was utterly dissatisfied with the "totally unregulated" state of the app market and he even raised the possibility of a "do not track" list, according to electronista.