Apple sued for invasion of privacy over location data collection

Apple was sued today in federal court in Tampa Florida for invasion of privacy and computer fraud by two people.  Vikram Ajjampur of Florida and William Devito of New York want a judge to order Apple to stop collecting the data.

Broadband Expert reported on this data collection last week and also provided a way to prevent the data collection on all your mobile devices including laptops.

Karen Gullo of Bloomberg reported the attorney for both Vikram Ajjampur and William Devito, is suing because he believes “Apple is now basically tracking people everywhere they go.”  Aaron Mayer, the attorney, says that Apple is collecting data that a federal marshal couldn’t collect without a warrant.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but I see a big fault in Aaron’s lawsuit.  Apple is not collecting the data!

The data in question resides on your iPhone and iPad and in your backup file that is stored on your computer that you use to run iTunes and backup your mobile device.  The data is not accessed by Apple and is not collected by them.

The data on your mobile device is stored in a secure area that cannot be accessed by third-party software or sent to Apple.  The data stored in your backup computer is totally under your control and you can take that file and encrypt it to prevent government prying or even delete it and wipe the space.

Presumably a forensics person under a court order could recover the data from your cell phone, but if you are really worried about that there are other options you could possibly take to prevent the data from being accessed, including destroying the phone if you suspect you have incriminating evidence on it.  Of course, I do not recommend that action as it would be illegal and you could be thrown in jail for destroying evidence.

We will have to see how the courts handle this.  It just may be a lawyer trying to establish a class action lawsuit after he wins some out of court go-away money from Apple.