27,000 South Koreans Sue Apple 112
jfruhlinger writes "You may have already forgotten the iPhone location-tracking furor, but 27,000 South Koreans haven't! They (or the lawyers recruiting them) have launched a class action suit against Apple due to the 'emotional distress' suffered. The litigants are seeking around $1,000 apiece in damages. From the article: 'Apple has faced complaints and criticisms since it said in April that its iPhones were storing locations of nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots for up to a year. Such data can be used to create a rough map of the device owner's movements.'"
Give me a break (Score:2, Insightful)
Emotional distress? Give me a break. This is just a bunch of ambulance chasers trying to cash in on what has already been dismissed as a non-issue. Yes, the iPhone tracks the locations and strengths of cellular towers.
Dear Korean Friends (Score:4, Insightful)
I've come to the belated realization that iPhones and (for the most part) Android phones are hardly more than devices for tracking your every move, thought, and desire for the purpose of selling stuff to you.
It's too bad you got taken in by the rows of shiny icons.
Also, in South Korea, only old people use iPhones [slashdot.org].
Rotten apples (Score:1, Insightful)
It is pretty impressive how Apple deflected that (Score:4, Insightful)
It is pretty impressive how Apple was able to wriggle out of that one. Nope, your phone "isn't tracking you," it's just a cache of cell towers used to speed GPS.
OK, fine. Then why does their privacy policy still allow Apple to collect your location data?
Oh, because that's for sending you local ads if you use an app that uses iAd, and for building Apple's database of Wi-Fi access points and GPS coordinates to allow iDevices without GPS to generate a location. (To provide local ads for apps that use iAd. Also for the user's benefit on occasion.)
But apparently that's OK, because we poor peons no longer have access to the location data Apple's recording, which includes a unique identifier so that they can track iDevices.
No problem at all with that, apparently.