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After several days of silence on the iPhone location tracking situation, Apple released a statement saying the iPhone was not logging location and that users were ‘confused’.
The ‘Apple Q&A on Location Data’ statement said that Apple was not tracking the location of iPhones and that concern about the tracking data uncovered by researchers was due to users being ‘confused’.
Fault lay with "creators of this new technology", including Apple, because they had not "provided enough education about these issues to date," Apple said.
Apple also claimed the iPhone is not logging the location of the user, claiming that it was instead maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to ‘help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.’
However Apple’s denial amounts to splitting hairs, the fact is that the file on the phone most certainly represents a detailed log of the phone’s location. It may not be as accurate as a GPS-lock, occasionally being wildly inaccurate, but location log it most certainly is.
Despite the claim that the iPhone is ‘iPhone is not logging your location’, Apple said that it would issue an iOS update which would reduce the amount of logged data, adding that the amount of logged data was a software bug.
Vitally the iOS update will also stop backing up the file to synced computers and will move to delete the file entirely when Location Services is disabled. The next iOS major iOS release would encrypt the cache for good measure.
