Apple have released iOS 4.3.3, an update which it hopes will calm privacy fears following recent revelations by two security researchers that Apple iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad with 3G, continuously store users’ location data to a “secret” file on their phone. While this may not be entirely true, Apple do cache or store Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower location data that could potentially be used to trace where users have been.

Hotspot and Wi-Fi location data stored on my iPad
Hotspot and Wi-Fi location data stored on my iPad

In a written response on its website, Apple stated that a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers that the device communicated with was maintained in order to provide fast and accurate device location data upon request. However, Apple fervently deny tracking users’ location data,

“Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

“Rather, it’s [the iPhone] 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.”

Even though the reasoning behind the location database and its usefulness has now been made known, Apple have released an iOS update that will address the issue further. In iOS 4.3.3 Apple will reduce the storage time or size of the location cache from up to one year (which they is a software “bug”) to possibly only seven days, they will no longer synchronise this “secret” file to iTunes and therefore users’ computers, and the cache will be deleted entirely whenever a user opts-out of Location Services on their device.

Apple have also stated that this location data is shared with them, but only in an “anonymous and encrypted form” making it impossible to identify its source.

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