Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has denied allegations put by Chinese’s leading state-controlled broadcaster CCTV that iPhone is used to track the user’s action, and is a threat to national security. In a quick and direct response, the iPhone maker took to its official website in China to publish that the location-based data gathered by the company is coded and stored locally on the device, which is why Apple or any other third party has no access to it.
Apple defends the feature
The iPhone maker established that the users want their phone to identify the locations of various activities such as shopping, travel and recording number of hours needed to reach the destination. The company made it clear that the data is processed specifically for the device, and the user location is not tracked at the company-level.
In its statement, Apple said that they appreciate CCTV’s effort to keep customers informed on the topic, which is very important. Also, the company mentioned that Chinese customers should know specifically about the functions performed by the company and also what it refrains from doing.
“As we have stated before, Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services,” Apple said in a statement. The statement, further, read that the company has never allowed access to servers and never will.
User’s privacy at risk
Just a couple of days back, CCTV presaged that location-based functions, and more precisely the “frequent locations” feature on the iPhone dig deeper into the individual privacy. These functions are capable of monitoring the location of the user, and data gathered in the process can be used to offer knowledge on the “state secrets.”
Users are free to activate this feature in their iPhone, which will allow the iPhone to keep a record of the locations visited often to provide meaningful location based-data.
CCTV alleged that the United States tech big-wigs databases are equivalent to “Gold mine.” The broadcaster citing the Chinese authorities, say that the company will be legally responsible for data seepage if any.
Other companies accused from time to time for secretly gathering data base are Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ;MSFT), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB).
