Apple Sheds Light on Location Tracking Data

There has been much hullabaloo lately surrounding Apple and it’s reported location tracking of iOS devices. Are they tracking our every move, every exact location? Perhaps storing it in unencrypted files, accessible to anyone from our mother to our boss? Well in reality, no they are not.

Apple finally responded to these accusations, hoping to set the record straight. In a question and answer statement, Apple has tried to put some of these rumors to rest.

To start off, Apple says that they never have and never will track the location of your device (like an iPhone). The company also says that there is much confusion surrounding the technical issues in providing mobile users fast and accurate location information, which they are partly to blame for.

According to Apple, the location data that researchers saw on the iPhone is merely the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can actually be more than one hundred miles away from your specific iPhone.

There are two bugs that Apple plans to fix. The first is that previously when you turned off Location Services, your iPhone continued to track those Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers near you. They are working on fixing this.

The second bug was that people’s location data had been stored for up to a year on the iPhone. They are changing it so that the iPhone will only store up to seven days of data.

Finally, the company says it will release a free iOS software update sometime in the next few weeks that reduces the size of the Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone, start encrypting and refrain from backing up this cache and delete it entirely when Location Services is turned off by the user.

Do you think Apple is doing enough? Or is this a case of consumers wanting fast location based information, and then complaining about it’s invasive nature?

New Facebook "Send" Button

Facebook has added another powerhouse button to their arsenal of features. The new “Send” button, which was launched Monday, is set to replace the classic “Email to a friend” button.

Situated next to the “Like” button, the send button will allow users to share content more privately with friends, groups, or other email addresses. Similar to the Like button, it allows you to quickly share pages and articles with your friends, but now it won’t be posted to the News Feed for all to see. It’s a great option for sharing gift ideas, travel destinations, book reviews, etc. to a specific group.

Another interesting thing to note is that Send counts towards the total number of Likes a page has. The Like total is now calculated by adding the number of Likes, shares, comments and inbox messages containing a URL.

The Send button is being launched on more than 50 websites, and I have no doubt that more will follow suit. The Send button’s private sharing ability makes it even more tempting to simply use Facebook rather than firing up your email to share a link.

Below is an example of what the Send button looks like: