Particularly, the plaintiffs note that Apple stores information about the location of device owners in the unenciphered form. According to them, in this way the users’ personal data can become an easy target for hackers and other intruders and can be used for criminal purposes.
On April 20 a record appeared in O'Reilly Radar blog, which was about a special feature of Apple iOS platform. It turned out, that iPhone smartphones and iPad tablets, equipped with cellular module, periodically record consumer’s location, even when the option transferring the corresponding data is disabled. These data are stored on the device in the system file called consolidated.db, which is copied on the computer’s hard disk, when synchronized with it.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is on sick leave, personally answered a user’s question about the issue by email, saying that "Apple does not track anyone”.
When the function “tracking” the users was revealed, the American civil activists and the members of the US Congress sent Apple open letters, asking to explain the principles of operation of the service, as well as what it was created for.