A Worm in the APPLE- Campaign Launched by Accessnow.org

The acessnow.org has recently launched a campaign “A worm in the Apple” here to raise awareness against the Apple products tracking the locations of their devices’ users, logging your private location data. The current US law protecting user privacy on the internet, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, doesn’t explicitly mention location-based data, law enforcement can actually obtain this information from our cell phone providers without a ruling from a judge, and because Apple is a US-based company, this law governs the privacy of iPhone and iPad users all over the world.

Access now says, “ As users, we have a right to know how our data are being collected and stored and to have the laws that govern online privacy updated to reflect our modern reality. Tell Senator Franken that it’s high time that privacy laws get in sync with 21st century technology, and we’ll deliver it on Tuesday to the Senator for presentation to the influential subcommittee that he chairs.”

Security experts say, companies like Apple and Google collect the location of Wi-Fi networks and cell towers to pinpoint the location of phones without using GPS technology where Apple was doing so through the users of its iPhones to keep track of the towers and clients itself for the effective services .

Similarly according to Apple, “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 (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.”

The question here is though the new updates are out in safe guarding the privacy and security issues but big companies like Apple should do thorough reseach with their products before launching . As these loop holes might result in damages to be too costly not just for the company but for the clients, who know the damages might have been done to individuals. Shouldn’t they be more aware towards the issues of public security and privacy is a question that has been raised.

(Note: iOS 4.3.3 released on Wedneday includes a change in coding so that (among other things) location data will only be stored on the iPhone or iPad for 7 days. However, people who have yet to update to this latest version will continue to have their location data for the past year stored in an unencrypted file on their device.)

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