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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Apple Issues Statement on Location Tracking.

Apple has just released a new page devoted to the question "LocationGate" which these days has affected many people coming to provoke reactions also important in international politics. You then arrived for the first time in almost a week, an official response and to direct all questions to the company directly or indirectly, confirming the presence of a bug in IOS responsible for the whole thing. More details to follow.

After the categorical response to Steve Jobs, " Apple is not no light , "now comes a statement of the company to respond to all questions of its users, clearly waiting for official news. Recall that the basic problem lies in the recording and storage of location data stored by the user OS. As repeatedly emphasized by some experts, this problem was to actually be traced to a bug in Ios , a voice that has now beenofficially confirmed by Apple .
However, Apple had previously informed everyone about the possibility that the same company could record some information about the device IOS, including its geographical position, from firmware 4.0 released in June of last year. Staying on the topic of upgrades, Apple announced it will release a new update for iOS that will fix the bug we have mentioned above.
The update should be available in the coming weeks (IOS 4.3.3) and will restore the proper functioning of the official responsible for the file location information of users, who will in turn disposed of by the operating system, according to an order priorities established by the use or disuse of an application rather than another.
Following the question-and-forth between Apple and an imaginary reader recently published by the company:
1. Why track the position of my Apple iPhone?
Apple does not track the location of your iPhone. He never did and never will.
2. So why is everyone so worried?
Provide users with fast and accurate location information while maintaining their security and their privacy has raised some very specific technical issues. Users are now confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough information about the use of the same until today.
3. Why the iPhone keeps track of my position?
The iPhone does not record your location. Rather than keep the information on the Wi-Fi hotspot and repeater to which you connect, some of which may be located more than 100 miles away from your iPhone. Calculate the position of a mobile phone using only data from the GPS satellites can take several minutes. The iPhone is able to reduce this time themes uilizzando hotspots Wi-Fi and data from cell phone towers to quickly find the GPS satellites, and also the position when the GPS signal is absent. These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhone Geo-tag by sending the positions of nearby Wi-Fi hotspot and repeaters in an anonymous and in an encrypted form to Apple.
4. This data is saved on my iPhone?
The source database is too large to be stored on the iPhone, then you need to download and store (cache) some parts of the same on every iPhone.This cache is protected but not encrypted and is stored each time you back up your iPhone with iTunes. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. We're going to lock up this cache in a future upgrade of IOS.
5. Apple can find out where they are based on these data?
No. This information is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted. Apple can not identify its source.
6. Were stored positions of users for almost a year. Why Apple needs this information?
We found that this is a bug that prevents clear the cache from time to time.Will be corrected with the next update of system software. We do not think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days for this data.
7. When the location service off, my iPhone continues to search for phone towers and WiFi networks?
It should not. This is a bug that we hope to solve soon.
8. What other position data are collected by Apple iPhone?
Apple collects anonymous traffic data in order to establish a complete database with the aim of providing better service to iPhone users over the next two years.
9. Apple currently provides data collected from iPhone to third parties?
We provide anonymous log of users who have joined the development of third-party applications to help with debugging their software. Our advertising system IADs can use the location as a factor in ad targeting. The position is not shared with third parties or unless the user explicitly approves it.
10. Apple does not believe that this information is important?
Yes, I am sure and Apple are aware of it. For example, the iPhone was the first phone to ask users to give their consent to any application that would use the geographical location. Apple will continue to be a leader in strengthening the security of personal information and privacy.

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