You might remember the furor last week over the discovery that your iPhone was keeping a log of cell tower locations it has accessed while also backing it up on your computer. People were understandably upset over this seemingly egregious breach of personal information. This morning, Apple released a fairly comprehensive list of questions and answers responding to the issue.
If you’re in a bit of a rush, here’s the tl;dr version of what Apple is saying:
- The iPhone is maintaining a cache of wi-fi hotspots and cell towers it has accessed to anonymously send to Apple to form a crowdsourced database to improve GPS functionality.
- Apple “has never [tracked the location of your iPhone] and has no plans to ever do so.”
- The cache was never meant to be as extensive as a year’s worth of data. They will change it to maintain no more than seven days worth of data.
- There is a “bug” that explains why the iPhone keeps caching cell tower data even when location services are turned off.
- They will release iOS updates that will stop backing up the cache to your computer, encrypt the cache on your phone, and fix the previous two issues.
- Apple is also collecting anonymous traffic data in preparation for a traffic service in the “next couple of years.”
If you ask me, they pretty much address all the potential issues that I had with the “scandal” in the first place. The location data log will only be present on the phone itself and they’ll make it a bit harder to get at by encrypting that data. There will also be a way to disable this gathering of data by turning off Location Services on the phone.
Not everyone agrees with me, though, as some people are already having fun with splitting hairs over the diction in Apple’s press release.
People like Sam Biddle from Gizmodo:
Apple still refuses to call a spade a spade. Your phone is logging your location, and has been since this summer. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and so have you. Their defense is akin to saying “I haven’t been staring in your window at you while you’re asleep, I’ve been looking inside and admiring all of your decor!”
Dude, anyone with half a brain can see through the PR-speak that a log of cell tower locations will pretty much pinpoint your general location. So what? The cell phone companies already keep this data in a more comprehensive format. If you were hoping to hide where you’ve been from the law, you were sadly mistaken, my friend.
The bigger problem is the potential security risk of keeping so much of this data on the phone and backing it up on the computer when most people do not encrypt their iTunes backups. The fact that you also had to completely turn off your phone in order to stop this logging was disconcerting as well. Apple is addressing all of these issues in a security update and confirmed that the data was collected anonymously and not shared with anyone else.
If you want to read between the lines of the statement even further, it’s pretty obvious that Apple didn’t think over the security implications when it implemented this data caching. All those references to “bugs” in the statement? They’re pretty much “Oops, my bads. Let’s just have the PR girl call them ‘bugs’ so we don’t look like idiots.” They messed up, but fortunately for Apple, their screwup hasn’t hurt their customers yet.
What do you think? Does Apple’s response satisfy you?
Here’s Apple’s full Q&A:
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.
