Apple sets the record straight on location tracking: It was a bug, fix is underway

Apple has finally gone on the record regarding the ongoing story about iOS location tracking by putting out a press release this morning. The document entitled “Q&A on Location Data” begins by saying that “Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.” It immediately flatly denies allegations of deliberate location tracking for unknown purposes. “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so”, it reads:

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. 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.

This line especially caught my attention as it indicates a new geolocation-based service from Apple:

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.

Gawker on Monday discovered an Apple patent that hints at plans to collect location history from users, although it doesn’t seem to be related to this issue. A bunch of independent experts were able to prove that the location data file is simply left sitting in an iPhone backup file on your computer and your device without ever being beamed up to the Apple cloud. The statement goes on to detail why Apple has been tracking your geographical location, what they’ve been doing with this data and how they plan on tackling the PR scandal dubbed Locationgate which ensued following the discovery of this issue.
They conclude by promising an iOS firmware update, due “sometime in the next few weeks”, that will encrypt the location data file on your device. Apple confirmed that said iOS update will “reduce 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”.
By the way, Microsoft has also come out with its own Q&A on location tracking in Windows Phone 7. The Windows maker confirmed it stores location data in a database, but only when users approve app requests for location retrieval.
Read Apple’s statement in its entirety right below the fold…