21 April 2011

Apple Is Not Tracking Your Every Move

Your iPhone might be. Apple isn't. Is the difference pedantic? I don't think so. Even ZDNet, whose writers should know better, made this mistake, claiming
Apple is not the first company to collect data without users knowing. Google fell in hot water in 2010 after admitting that it was collecting data from non password-protected Wi-Fi networks for three years as part of its Street View project.
Wrong. Apple is not collecting your data. Google was.


Every reporter who breathlessly repeated the story should have done a bit of fact-checking first. Anyone interested should read this.
1) Apple is not collecting this data
2) This hidden file is neither new nor secret
3) This "discovery" was published months ago.

 So what should Apple do? I believe Apple should do two things.
  1. release a free app that wipes the log data on your iphone/ipad with a single button push
  2. add a setting that allows you to disable tracking entirely

P.S. If everyone could just calm the fuck down, I'd appreciate it.


    2 comments:

    JustJoeP said...

    I don't own an iPhone, or other smart phone so it is not a problem for me.

    Itching my nose though is a problem, since my tiny little T-Rex forearms can't reach higher than my collar bone.

    One nice thing about being a dinosaur though, is that I can scare or fascinate small children.

    pyker said...

    This was my first smart phone. I was on a dumb phone until the second half of last year. I liked my dumb phones, but don't miss them.