Apple hasn’t officially responded to reports that the iPhone and iPad track user movements, but CEO Steve Jobs apparently has.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Jobs reportedly responded to an email sent by a MacRumors reader asking about the devices tracking user’s location. The user asked Steve to explain why Apple would track its users. He also said in the email that he was going to switch to a Droid because it doesn’t track users.
Steve responded via email.
“Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false,” wrote Jobs.
Reports that Apple’s iPhone and iPad track user’s location popped up last week. It wasn’t long before people realized that Android phones also tracked user’s data.
Why would Google track anyone? It’s not as though 96% of their income flows from ads or anything. Oh, wait.
Google most certainly tracks with their Android OS (ad platform). Apple doesn’t becuase of their differing business model. I really believe this is a slip up, likely corrected with the next point update.
You have no more real privacy. It’s over. Companies make too much money selling information about your patterns and habits. Your a product and we know how big business protects it’s products.
“Tracking,” in this sense, is a subcategory of domestic spying. While Android spies on your data, so do unregulated domestic spy agencies like Choice Point and Lixix Nexis which sell their data surreptitiously acquired to the NSA and any secret gov. agency that wants to purchase it, furthering and more comprehensively their ability to spy on your data which you did not want them to have. You were either coerced to give it over or it was stolen. True.
The vast majority of the unwashed masses are superstitious dolts, compulsively clinging to their respective beliefs at the expense of any clear vision of what’s actually there.
Apple is the effect of this to some degree. But I believe there are a good number of sentient beings left walking around who don’t fall for most of the claptrap floating around the internet.
The issue is NOT that Apple, or for that matter AT&T, tracks location data for improvement of quality of service or related reasons. That is referenced and allowed by the Terms of Service, and frankly makes sense. The issue is, why is there a ongoing (unencrypted!) log file on my iPhone, that cannot be turned off OR deleted by the user. A file that persists over updates and backups. Apple gets the info they need every 12 hours or whenever you hook up to the net next. They said so. So explain the use and need for the log file, kept totally out of the control of the user. That is the question I would like Steve to answer.