Alex Levinson: “I don’t think that’s a legal battle Apple wants to face considering the sale of over 100 million iDevices worldwide. That raises the question – how is this data used? It’s used all the time by software running on the phone. Built-In applications such as Maps and Camera use this geolocational data to operate. Apple provides an API for access to location awareness called Core Location.”
No, Apple isn’t “Big Brother”, that’s the government’s job. Go read the article, it’s very good, and gives you the truth about how the data is used, including this nice little nugget.
“Apple is not harvesting this data from your device. This is data on the device that you as the customer purchased and unless they can show concrete evidence supporting this claim – network traffic analysis of connections to Apple servers – I rebut this claim in full.”
Oh, and yes, Android devices do something similar.
If you have an iPhone and would like to create a map of the places you’ve been, there’s an app for that.