CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.
1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not
tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no
plans to ever do so.
2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
Providing mobile
users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their
security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which
are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly
because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not
provided enough education about these issues to date.
3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging
your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and
cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located
more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone
rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.
Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up
to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by
using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites,
and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell
tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements).
These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a
crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is
generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged
locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and
encrypted form to Apple.
4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?
The entire
crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download
an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected
but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your
iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings
in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone
is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the
locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s
location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone.
We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon
(see Software Update section below).
5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell
tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and
encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.
6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being
stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to
assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the
iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi
hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the
iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating
location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we
uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).
We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this
data.
7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes
continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s
crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan
to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).
8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides
crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now
collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic
database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic
service in the next couple of years.
9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third
parties?
We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted
in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds
advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads.
Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user
explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for
example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).
10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy
are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the
first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that
wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in
strengthening personal information security and privacy.
Software Update
Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:
- reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
- ceases backing up this cache, and
- deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.
In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.
NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple’s PR website (www.apple.com/pr), or call Apple’s Media Helpline at (408) 974-2042.
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