After claims in China’s state run media last week that location tracking features in the forthcoming upgrades to the iPhone’s software package constitute a threat to China’s national security, Apple has hit back and counter-argued China’s claims are baseless.
“Our customers want and expect their mobile devices to be able to quickly and reliably determine their current locations for specific activities such as shopping, travel, finding the nearest restaurant or calculating the amount of time it takes them to get to work. We do this at the device level. Apple does not track users’ locations – Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so,” the company wrote in a bilingual post on its Chinese website.
The post went on to note that location services must be enabled, and are not the default setting, as reported by CCTV. Apple also noted that it does not collect or transmit user data, that it has no access to data stored in users phones and that it is deeply committed to privacy. They also noted their independence of U.S. government agencies that may be looking to collect data.
“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. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It’s something we feel very strongly about.”
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