privacy - page 19

As promised, Apple sent V.P. Guy Tribble to Washington to address Senator Al Franken and other stuffy politicians about the so-called LocationGate scandal.

Cupertino’s message? Same as it ever was: we don’t track user locations. Period.

“We do not share customer information with third parties without our customers’ explicit consent. Apple does not track users’ locations. Apple has never done so and has no plans to do so,” said Tribble.

Curiously, while Apple may not track users’ locations, the United States Department of Justice would like mobile providers to start, allowing the Department of Justice to attain records that would “enable law enforcement to identify a suspect’s smartphone based on the IP addresses collected by Web sites that the suspect visited.”

What’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily what’s good for the gander. Apparently, it’s only okay for the government to keep track of what you do with your smartphone, not Apple.

The iPhone tracking issue that’s causing a big privacy stink isn’t new and isn’t really tracking users, says an iOS forensics researcher.

It’s actually a data file that is used internally by the iPhone to do things like geo-tag photos, and it’s been in iOS for a long time (in a different form).

What’s new is a nifty extraction tool called iPhoneTracker that pulls the data off your hard drive and makes a striking map out of it. iPhoneTracker was released this week at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference, causing a huge outcry about privacy and prompting U.S. Senator Al Franken to write to Steve Jobs.

In addition, the file has become more accessible than it used to be because it’s now used by third-party apps that require location data.

“It is not secret, malicious, or hidden,” writes Alex Levinson, an iOS forensics researcher.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) wants answers about the iPhone’s undisclosed tracking features.

As reported, the iPhone and 3G iPad secretly record your location as you travel around and sync it with your computer. It appears to be a serious violation of privacy. It was first disclosed by security researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warren at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference.

Apple hasn’t yet explained the matter, prompting Sen. Franken to publish an open letter to Steve Jobs demanding answers.

Sen Franken wants to know why Apple is collecting the data; how it is collected; what it is used for; why it isn’t encrypted; if the data is shared; and why consumers aren’t asked before the data is collected.

Here’s the full text of Sen. Franken’s letter to Jobs:

The big news today is all about how Apple has apparently been busy secretly squirreling away data about your movements on your iPhone 4 or GPS-equipped iPad, and storing it in a file on your computer via syncing. Is this a big deal, or business as usual, just a giant tech company doing its thing?

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The latest beta version of Safari now features a do-not-track privacy setting to prevent online advertisers from tracking users as they surf the Web.

The tool has been added to the latest version of Safari in Lion, the upcoming update to OS X expected to go public this summer.

Safari is the third major browser to add a do-not-track setting. It joins Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox include it, but Google’s Chrome does not — yet.

Google, of course, is one of the web’s biggest online advertisers. It’s also worth noting that Apple offers an in-app advertising program called iAds that competes with other forms of advertising, online and off.

Wall Street Journal: Apple Adds Do-Not-Track Tool to New Browser