1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?

Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

That’s the question that Apple answered, and that’s how they answered. As usual, being ignorant at its best, that’s how Apple rolls. The issue that has spark quite some controversy has finally get into Apple’s ears and Cupertino has finally given an official statement regarding this issue.

Apple says that it does not, and has no plans to, track users’ iPhones. What it’s actually doing is “maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location,” which are then used to provide speedier calculation of your position when you want to use the device’s maps or other location-based services. The data collection that was recently brought to the public attention represents, according to Apple, the location of WiFi hotspots and cell towers around you, not your actual iPhone.

The good thing is that Apple has considered the fact ‘iPhones have been shown to store as much as a year’s worth of data’ a bug, and plans to limit that period to a week in a future software update. The additional issue of data being collected after users turned off Location Services is also a bug, also to be fixed by Apple in that upcoming update.

Of course, Apple has ignored another question of “why only now”, as experts have known about this ‘bug’ since September last year. Still, it’s a good thing that Apple will be patching this very soon, and even promised that the update will be coming over the next few weeks, while the next major iteration of iOS should encrypt the cache file.

And one last thing. In Apple’s statement, one particular information have been disclosed, that is “Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.”