UPDATED 12:25 EDT / APRIL 26 2011

Apple iPhone, iPad Tracking Issues Spawn their First Lawsuit

apple-tracking-iosSeeking a judge to bar Apple from collecting location information, an iPhone user in Florida, Vikram Ajjampur, and an iPad user in New York, William Devito, have filed suit against the computer giant. The suit also asks for refunds as neither plaintiff claims that they wouldn’t have bought their devices had they known it would track and store their location.

Last week, it was revealed by two programmers from the UK that location tracking data was being stored in iOS devices without informing the user. This has generated a certain amount of concern and surprise from customer groups and privacy advocacy groups—even though it is well acknowledged that the information is not being transmitted, simply stored on the device (although it is not encrypted and is part of the phone sync process.)

Bloomberg is running a story outlining the depth and breadth of the lawsuit,

The complaint cited a report last week by two computer programmers claiming that Apple’s iOS4 operating system is logging latitude-longitude coordinates along with the time a spot is visited. The programmers said Apple devices are collecting about a year’s worth of location data. Apple hasn’t commented on the matter since the April 20 report was released.

“We take issue specifically with the notion that Apple is now basically tracking people everywhere they go,” Aaron Mayer, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said today in a telephone interview. “If you are a federal marshal, you have to have a warrant to do this kind of thing, and Apple is doing it without one.”

The lawsuit seems a little bit premature as all the details of the action haven’t been sorted out by every party involved. It does look like we know everything there is to know about how it works—but what users and applications on the phone may or may not know hasn’t been addressed by Apple yet. In fact, the revelation itself has attracted the attention of regulators in multiple countries (including the US.)

Certainly the plaintiff’s lawyer in this case is correct that a federal marshal requires a warrant to track this information; but Apple’s iOS devices are not sending this information anywhere—let alone to Apple—it’s stored on the device and the user’s computer but that’s it. Other parties who access the information much first breach the customer’s privacy to get to it.

The above, of course, keeping in mind that because the information is unencrypted and synced that way it would be trivial for an attacker to grab the information.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple is covertly grabbing the information in violation of federal computer fraud and deceptive trade practices; but it’s hard to fully agree with this. It’s true that it was relatively unknown in many circles that this information is being stored on the phone, but logs of activity aren’t unknown for a multitude of devices and software. That Apple’s OS doesn’t collect the information for transmission would probably mitigate away all of these allegations in legal terms against the giant corporation.

It’s taken almost a week now and Apple still hasn’t said much about the discovery. Hopefully they’ll be assuring their users soon that they’re doing something about it. In order to head off a lot of potential issues they could proactively prepare by changing the “feature.” First, they could update iOS to give users finer control over when and how their location is tracked and stored by giving users an “off switch” for the tracking itself (without having to turn off Location Services, which is already documented as they way to stop it.) Second, they could give users a “keep-until-date” control that permits them to have only a certain number of minutes/hours of location data stored on their phones. They could also add encryption for the file that stores the information and/or maybe an option not to sync it with PC.

Privacy is a User Experience

privacy-please

Privacy is a big deal in the consumer electronics market and as we become more and more wired our devices consolidate and collect more of our behavior. Being aware of what a device tracks about you is the first line of defense for keeping it from falling into the wrong hands. Information stored on all the devices we interact with can leave nearly indelible marks of our passage so it makes sense that all devices should disclose what information they’re keeping for more than any ephemeral period of time.

Companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and others have embedded themselves deeply into our social lives by providing products that augment our lives by using data emanated from our behaviors. Those same behaviors—where we go, what we do, what we say—in the past would have stayed between friends; but now they’re beginning to rise above these barriers and form portraits of our activities that only we were fully aware of.

Part of privacy isn’t just choosing who has access to know intimate details of our lives but also choosing how we record it. Some people keep diaries, others don’t care to—a diary doesn’t often leave the possession of the writer, much like the tracking data on the iPhone doesn’t leave the phone, but it leaves us open to have intimate details of our lives scrutinized by people we’d rather not.

Sometimes, it’s just best not to have the information in one place and I should be able to make the decision whether my devices keep that or not.

Apple should move on this soon and put more power in the hands of their customers to be the masters of their unexpected diaries.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU