Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Steve Jobs says Apple doesn't track anyone, Android does

Published Apr 25th, 2011 10:07AM EDT
BGR

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

In what is purported to be an email exchange with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a MacRumors reader sent in the following:

Q: Steve,
Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.

A: Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.

Sent from my iPhone

What’s not clear is whether or not Jobs was indicating that stored location data isn’t actually being sent back to Apple, and is instead only stored locally on the device and in iOS backup files created by iTunes. What is clear according to Jobs, however, is that Android is tracking customer’s location (and more) right out of the box. There are reports that the location recording issue in iOS 4 will be fixed in a software update and was a bug as opposed to a deliberate attempt to collect data.

Read

Jonathan S. Geller
Jonathan Geller Founder, President & Editor-in-chief

Jonathan S. Geller founded Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR, in 2006. It became the biggest mobile news destination in the world by the end of 2009, and BGR was acquired by leading digital media company PMC in April 2010.

Jonathan is President of BGR Media, LLC., and Editor-in-chief of the BGR website.

What started as a side project at the age of 16, quickly transpired into 24-hour days and nights of sharing exclusive and breaking news about the mobile communications industry. BGR now reaches up to 100 million readers a month through the website, syndication partners, and additional channels.