iOS and Android face EU clampdown on location logging

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iphone-location-thumb.jpgNew, stricter EU regulations relating to “personal data” could soon force Apple and Google to overhaul the way their iOS and Android devices respectively use location data.

The updated Data Protection Directive, due later on in 2011, would tighten the belt around the way smartphones log a user’s movements and track location data in apps, which under new EU regulations would become a breach of a user’s privacy laws.

“Since smartphones and tablet computers are inextricably linked to their owner, the movement patterns of the devices provide a very intimate insight into the private life of the owners. One of the great risks is that the owners are unaware they transmit their location, and to whom,” according to the Article 29 Working Party.

Though both Apple and Google claim the location data collected is kept anonymously, the EU advisory panel is still calling that location services on tablets and smartphones are turned off by default, and can only be turned back on after a deep description of how they are used and of the information they are collecting is given to the user.

Via: Financial Times/ Slashgear

Gerald Lynch
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2 comments

  • However, Android is still a problem should not be overlooked. Recently, the field of Android in the smart phone is Trojan Dingsi, mobile security headache enough for Google. In the field of tablet PCs, with the iPad2 release, Apple flat-panel market share continues to top ranking, in addition, Android Market very different application than the App Store. Thus, Android frequency of their own problems, attempt to challenge Apple’s difficulty is not small. Although it is Android applications can not compete with Apple, but along with Android promotion and popularization of the application, the number of orders of magnitude increase in, Android applications in the foreseeable future has the ability to phase with the Apple competition.

    And the biggest advantage of Android application store will not strictly review the application. Better than Apple at this point.

    Ever since Google launched the Android system, since the major manufacturers have launched their own Android platform for mobile phones, HTC , Sony Ericsson, Meizu, Motorola, Sharp, LG , Samsung, Lenovo, etc., every mobile phone manufacturers have launched their own Android phone models varied, numerous.

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