HIGHLIGHTS
- iPhone 11 Pro collects users’ location data even when Location Services is turned off.
- This happens when each app is set to never request location data but main Location Data service is on.
- Apple has acknowledged that iPhone 11 Pro collects data even when users tell it otherwise.
Apple markets its devices in a way that send a strong privacy-centric message to its customers. But now a new report suggests that Apple devices – at least the iPhone 11 Pro – might not be all that private and secure after all.
According to a report by security researcher Brian Krebs Apple’s newly launched iPhone 11 Pro intermittenly seeks users’ location data even when individual apps are set to ‘Never’ ask for this information. While this might suit the company’s privacy policy, Krebs finds it particularly odd.
Apple’s privacy policy for iPhone’s Location Services screen says — “If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers (where supported by a device) in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations.”
Simply put, even if all your apps are set never to location data, but the Location Services feature on your iPhone is turned on, some apps will seek your location data time to time and share them with the nearby cell towers. The only way for you to prevent this from happening completely is by disabling the Location Services completely. In case you aren’t sure how to disable Location Services on your iPhone, just follow these steps:
— Open the Settings apps and scroll down to the Privacy Settings.
— In the Privacy Settings tap on the Location Services option.
— Now toggle the Location Services button to off.
When you do this, the icon that indicates that the Location Services feature is turned on — a small diagonal upward arrow near the battery icon – disappears.
When the security researcher contacted the Cupertino, California based company for reporting what seemed like a bug, Apple responded that the iPhone was performing. “We do not see any actual security implications…It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings,” an Apple engineer said in a response to the report.
Bottom line is that if you don’t want anyone to know your whereabouts ever, you will have to disable the Location Services feature completely.
