NEW YORK - with Congress investigated and prosecutions flying, Apple offered a statement carefully drafted by promising to change lanes. Kind of. Reports for Dan Lyons.
After a week of silence, Apple on Wednesday responded to the fury over reports that his iPhone and iPad 3 G have been keeping track of user location data.
Statements of Apple came in the form of a Q & A published on its Web site.
Response of Apple comes down to this: we do not do something wrong, but we will correct some errors.
"Apple is followed not the location of your iPhone." Apple has never done and has no intention to ever do, "the statement reads."
Mobile phones from Apple are, however, retains the history of location data, the company said. And, because of a software "bug" (cough, cough) its needed more than data storage devices, the company said. Which will be corrected in a future version of the software that runs devices, says Apple. Also, Apple will begin to encrypt data stored on the phone.
Buried in the Declaration is an admission that Apple has been sharing with advertisers user location data.
The answer seems to be enough to satisfy Senator Al Franken, which is held a hearing on mobile phones and privacy may 10. "I still have questions on exactly what has happened here and why Apple did not inform users on what it has been done," he said in a statement.
Response of Apple in some respects is too cute by half. For example, Apple has said it is not tracked the location of users or of the iPhones - rather it performs monitoring of cell phone towers and WiFi hotspots "around your current location, some of which may be more than 100 kilometres from your iPhone."
See? Not tracking you - just the cell phone towers and the nearest WiFi hotspots. Get the difference?
Apple has declared using the cell tower and hotspot Wi-Fi allows the phone to calculate your location more quickly than the use of GPS satellite data.
Apple also said that it is collecting data that gets sent back "to the tens of millions of iPhone" from Apple. These data "crowd source" are "anonymous and encrypted," Apple said.
Perhaps most intriguing was the revelation, buried in the middle of the penultimate paragraph of Declaration of Apple, Apple has been sharing with advertisers user location data.
"Our system of advertising iAds can use location as a factor of targeting of ads," Apple said, while adding that this happens only if users approve giving their location to the advertiser.
Apple also said that collect anonymous traffic data "to provide users of iPhone service improved traffic in the next two years."
This service may compete with what Google offers in Google Maps.
The fuss is about iPhone and privacy began last week when two researchers published a report saying that they have found a hidden database maintained in Apple devices. Database contained location user data dating back as far as a year, researchers said.
Shortly after this report, another emerged saying that Google has collected location data user of its mobile operating system Android-based phones.
Google it addressed in a statement, saying: "no location data are returned to the Google location servers are anonymized and is not linked or traceable to a specific user."
Since then, came reports that Microsoft has also been followed location phones user data its Windows Phone 7 operating system.
The revelations about Apple and Google have prompted Senator Al Franken to schedule a hearing on mobile phones and privacy for May 10 in Washington.
Franken said Wednesday that he still hopes to Apple and Google will attend his hearing. "I look forward to more from Apple and Google on these issues," he said. "I am happy that Apple has responded to some of the issues I raised, and I am pleased that they have recognized that they need to take measures to solve these problems."
Franken said the fuss is about on mobile phones and location data "has 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 provide a protection as technology has advanced."
Dan Lyons is Newsweek technology editor and creator of Fake Steve Jobs, the persona behind the well known tech blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Before joining Newsweek, Lyons spent 10 years at Forbes.
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