Apple Releases iOS 4.3.3 to Stop Location Tracking

Posted May 4, 2011 at 12:11PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: iOS Tags: apple, ios, ios 4.3.3

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f you’re one of those iPhone owners upset over having your location tracked, go over to the Apple site right now and download iOS 4.3.3 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Then turn off “Location Services” in Settings and your iPhone will stop stalking you. Upgrading to iOS 4.3.3 will also significantly reduce the amount of location data stored in your database. This move from Apple comes after a pair of security researchers claimed that the iPhone was storing up to a year’s worth of location tracking information on its user which could be accessed by outside parties. This led to a firestorm of bad publicity for Apple, including an investigation by a U.S. Senator and Representative. Apple initially said “bugs” were to blame for the iPhones storing a year’s worth of the user’s location data in unencrypted logs. A few days ago, Apple issued a press release stating that a new version of iOS would “[reduce] the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,” “[cease] backing up this cache,” and “[delete] this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.” So will this satisfy the media and irate users? That should depend on how well the fix works. It seems like every week or so, Apple is releasing a new iOS update to correct the bugs from the previous one.

This particular glitch got extra-fast service because of the negative publicity generated by the “stalking” issue, which conjured up images of children being followed by molesters who track their movements via the iPhone. Much of the coverage was overly dramatic, creating scenarios that weren’t likely to ever happen, but at least the furor forced Apple into action.

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