Steve Jobs on iOS Location Issue: 'We Don't Track Anyone'
There has obviously been a lot of discussion about last week's disclosure that iOS devices are maintaining an easily-accessible database tracking the movements of users dating back to the introduction of iOS 4 a year ago.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc runs five days: researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden disclosed at the Where 2.0 conference that iPhones and 3G iPads have been logging an easily-accessible database of user movements since iOS 4 launched (Apple is recording your moves), and Wired's Gadget Lab followed with a technical breakdown of how and why the data is collected (how Apple collects the location data).
Now Steve Jobs — who has been on a confirmed health-related leave of absence since March — has answered user email flatly denying the framing ('We don't track anyone'), while Boing Boing reports a class action lawsuit has already been filed against Apple in the US. A CEO denial plus a legal filing within a week of disclosure makes this a reputational and legal test case, not just a technical curiosity.
First-order effects
- Apple faces an active US class action suit over the location file while its own CEO, via informal email replies rather than a formal statement, insists the company doesn't track anyone — a gap between the confirmed existence of the year-old database and the official denial.
- iPhone and 3G iPad owners now know their movements since mid-2010 sit in an unencrypted file on the device and any synced backups, making deletion and backup hygiene immediate user actions.
Second-order effects
- Rival smartphone platforms face the obvious follow-up question about their own location logging, since the disclosure method — independent researchers examining device files — transfers directly to Android, BlackBerry, and others.
- The lawsuit raises the cost of ambiguity for Apple: informal executive denials are unlikely to satisfy litigators or privacy regulators, pressuring the company toward an official explanation of what the data is for and why it persisted.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, location history becomes a regulated data category rather than an engineering byproduct — with platform vendors pushed toward explicit consent, encryption, and retention limits as default design constraints.
- The episode establishes a template for accountability: researcher disclosure, viral coverage, executive denial, then litigation — a sequence likely to repeat for any mobile vendor holding sensitive sensor data.
The trend: Smartphones are quietly becoming ambient location recorders, and each researcher disclosure forces platform vendors to defend data-retention choices they made without telling users.