Apple has denied that the iPhone has a problem of protection of personal information - Wednesday and then promised to fix. The tech giant took a week to respond to a brouhaha about how devices connect the movements of their owners.
Privacy erupted when security researchers said a file found on a PC linked to the iPhone which allowed them to create maps of the movements of the phones up to one year of the last week. Combined with similar questions on smartphone Google Android software, the new conscious left of the protection of personal information smartphone users request the amount of information they surrendering without knowing.
Apple rejected the claims that it was required tabs on its customers, saying that file folders sensitive Wi - Fi and the towers of cell in the area of the iPhone, not the aisles and of their users.
The company implied that the privacy concerns raised by this file are based in part on a misunderstanding. But he also said that a software error was the reason why files are stored in the value of a year of information, and that would fix this issue and others in a few weeks.
"Users are confused, in part because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education on these issues to date," Apple said in his first full response to the allegations. He had disclosed the nature of the file location in a letter to Congress last summer after a previous round of questions about its practices of the location tracking.
Using data on the phone discover its location, says Apple. They allow the phone to listen to signals from hot spots and the cell towers, which are much stronger than the GPS satellite signals. Wi - Fi signals are not far away, which means that if a phone picks up a signal he admits, it can infer that it is close to the hot point.
Taken together, this means navigation applications, may be the location of the phone more quickly and more precisely whether the telephone relied on only GPS, Apple said.
However, it is still not clear why the files are so detailed that they allow the reconstruction of the movements of the phone.
In his statement of questions and answers by 10 points, Apple did not explain why the files contain "timestamps" that connect a phone to some hot spots and towers of cells at one time. These timestamps are allowing researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden to build maps of animation of the movements of a phone more than a year.
Reeve said he could say, as Apple could use productive location without storage timestamps data. He was pleased that the company apply software patches to protect data.
Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a group of rights of privacy based in Washington, praised the company for making quick changes to the iPhone operating system.
But Larry l. Smith, President of the Institute for crisis management, a public relations company, said that apple should have responded to the concerns last week even if it had not all ready answers.
Questions as "Is my iPhone location followed Apple?" are not entirely unexpected, and Apple should have some sleep statements ready to go, Smith said.
The reaction of Apple is recalling its response, last summer, when Consumer Reports and others reported that the iPhone 4 suffered from signal loss took place in a certain way.
Apple remained quiet for a week after the launch of the phone, and then dismissed, there is a problem material but said it aloud how the iPhone display bars of signal. Two weeks later, it offered free protective case which isolated the antenna, reducing the loss of signal. Still, he denied that the design was faulty. The phone call remained intact.
Apple is not the only technology company respond to the allegations that it tracks customers. Google Inc. has acknowledged last week that phone running its Android software store data location directly on the phones for a short period of users who have chosen to use the GPS services. Said Google was done "to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices".
Apple says iPhone data are kept for a year due to a software error. The company said there was no need to store data for more than seven days, and a software update in the coming weeks will limit the size of the file.
The iPhone will also stop back up the file of the user's computer, a practice that has raised concerns. Computers are much more vulnerable to attempts to remote hacking than mobile phones.
A third planned patch is to encrypt the file, and stop the download data completely to the phones were all "location Services" is disabled, Apple said.
Senator Al Franken, D - Minnesota, President of the judicial Senate Subcommittee on privacy, technology and law, said that there still questions about why Apple did not inform users of what he was doing.
"This raised broader questions of how the locations of mobile devices are followed and shared by companies such as Apple and Google, and whether if federal laws offer adequate protection as technology has advanced," Franken said Wednesday. It provides an on cell phones and privacy hearing next month.
How an iPhone stores its own situation appears to be at most a minor threat to privacy. A snoop would need access to the victim of phone or PC, which usually much store other personal information. Phones contain texts, emails and phone calls lists. PCs contain information such as tax returns, the logs of Web sites visited and passwords.
There is a separate issue of smartphones like iPhone transmitting location wireless enterprise servers. In the Declaration on Wednesday, Apple reiterated that iPhone regularly send their location to Apple, but do so anonymously, so that the company is not able to follow users.
IPhone can also transmit a user location to companies running applications with location-based services, with the consent of the user. Businesses that buy ads through iAds Apple advertising system can also locate users, but only those who approve the specifically an application for locating a particular advertisement.
Apple shares fell 27 cents to $350.15 on Wednesday.
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