AllThingsD » location

Foursquare's Crowley Declares Bygones! -- And Maybe More? -- With Google

Lauren Goode — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:06:51 +0000

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley sold his company, Dodgeball, to Google in 2007, but he left two years later complaining about the lack of resources devoted to his start-up by the search giant.

Crowley called the experience the “perfect storm of bad timing.”

But that sentiment has apparently shifted considerably. Now, Crowley looks back on his Google tenure as valuable — and said that he’s feeling a lot friendlier toward Google these days.

“You know when people leave a job and they say they didn’t know what they came away with after two years? That’s how I felt when I first left Google,” Crowley said in an interview with AllThingsD. “But I’ve been able to spend time with the folks at Google and reconnect with people there. And now when things come up at Foursquare, [they're] all the challenges and issues I realize I already encountered at Google.”

Could that mean even closer relations in the future?

Crowley declined to elaborate on the substance of his talks with Google, which, in some cases, are with business development teams.

But what about the possibility of another acquisition?

“I wouldn’t disqualify anything,” he said. “The thing that’s important to us is doing the things we want to do, which could be partnering with someone, or it could be continuing to grow the product independently.”

While that’s appropriately vague enough, what is clear is that where Foursquare goes from here is a big question going forward.

Most especially, while it still remains the cool kid at the check-in party, especially as more competitors are checking out — is the party dying down?

Foursquare now claims 15 million users, adding the last five million in just the last six months, a fact it often points to as a sign of success rather than to its aggregate number of downloads.

As a basis for comparison, the popular mobile photo-sharing app Instagram recently touted it had attracted between 14 and 15 million users, amassed in just over a year.

There is no doubt, though, that Foursquare started with a similar bang. Based in New York, the start-up first launched in 2009 as a mobile social networking site that tapped into the inherent GPS capabilities of smartphones.

It was not that unlike the idea behind Dodgeball. But this time, Crowley, along with Naveen Selvadurai, created a fast-growing mobile app that allowed users to broadcast to their friends where they were, while also earning badges and mayoral bragging rights for visiting certain locations.

It took off from there, with Crowley and Foursquare featured in splashy magazine takeouts and even in an ad for the Gap, portrayed as the toast of New York’s entrepreneur scene.

By the spring of 2010, the hot company was reported to be weighing offers from both Yahoo and Facebook, which shortly afterward introduced its own check-in function called Places.

Neither of those deals happened, and this past summer, the company raised $50 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and others.

That move sent a clear message: We’ll grow ourselves, thanks very much.

Still, despite the cash, Crowley is careful to note that he realizes that times have changed in the location space.

While he said he believes that social media is moving away from the idea of just one news feed, the growing popularity of apps such as Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Path imply that consumers have an appetite for multiple apps.

And while data shows that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of geolocation services, it also indicates that the location-based craze hasn’t really caught on yet.

Crowley said he doesn’t put much stock in the most recent Forrester Research report on location-based services. He noted that three years ago Twitter was known as the online network for broadcasting what people had for lunch, before it became recognized as a game-changing technology tool.

That said, a handful of other location-focused companies — Hot Potato, SimpleGeo and early Foursquare competitor Gowalla, as well as Pelago, which was bought by Groupon — have all been absorbed by bigger tech companies in the past 18 months, their value less than expected by eager investors. Instead, they were bought mainly for their entrepreneurial and engineering talent rather than their product or user base.

That’s left Foursquare standing tall, but largely alone.

Crowley said that if the company had to focus on one area right now, it would be nearby discovery, fed by the database that’s been built up over the past two and a half years. He even went as far as to say there’s been a de-emphasis on the flagship “check-in” feature, citing evidence that more people are using the app to get tips without actually checking in.

Within the app, which is available on iOS, BlackBerry and Android, users can also follow friends, get tips on local venues and make to-do lists. Its most recent feature, Radar, pings users when they’re near venues they’ve indicated they want to check out, or in this case, check into.

And, with regard to Foursquare’s other high-profile feature — badge-earning — Crowley likened the whole element to the movie “The Karate Kid.”

“It’s like Mr. Miyagi having Daniel paint the fence, and later he realizes he’s been practicing karate,” Crowley said. “Badges are an important onboarding tool, but from the beginning we’ve said the important thing was data, and now we’ve gotten our users to leave all of these data signals.”

Crowley hinted at more differentiating products coming down the pipeline, and said he wouldn’t be surprised to see more consolidation and sharing among social networking apps, as well as more acquisitions within the industry.

With more than 800 million active users in Facebook’s network, Foursquare might become even more interesting to Google, which has jumped into the social networking space with Google+. Now Foursquare and Google share a common rival in Facebook, which may also help them make up their past differences.

Whether Foursquare could be the buyer, or one of those acquisitions, remains to be seen.

Here's Gowalla CEO's Non-Denial Denial Email to Investors About Facebook Acquisition

Kara Swisher — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:54:43 +0000

Update: Facebook has confirmed it is hiring Gowalla’s core team, while the Gowalla product will be shut down.

Even Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn’t pretending a deal for Facebook to buy the location-sharing company isn’t happening, as you can read below in an email he sent to his investors.

Both companies declined to comment on a story on Friday and over the weekend. CNN had the scoop about the social networking giant acquiring Gowalla, which I have taken to calling Not-Foursquare.

That’s because — despite its often clever approach and innovation — it never caught up with the leading social location service.

Gowalla, which changed its approach several times, had been for sale for some time, said several sources.

The Austin-based start-up has raised just under $11 million from a range of investors, including Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners and the Founders Fund, along with a batch of well-known angel investors.

But let’s put this one to bed with the email that Williams sent out after the CNN story broke Friday, which was read to me tonight, so I might not have all of it perfectly and it is missing a sentence about I-will-smack-the-leaker):

Subject: Rumors and speculation

CNN just broke the news that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook. This story was leaked from an unknown souurce.

The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.

But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon. Until then, I am so very grateful for what you have done to make Gowalla a success.

The second confirmation email has apparently not yet been sent, but I will try to get it when it is, along with the price.

So, until the official official yes, here’s a video interview I did with Williams in April of 2010 about the location “wars”:

[ See post to watch video ]

Facebook Updates Help Users Share Better With Others

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:03:19 +0000

On a recent vacation to Aruba, I had to smile when I saw that each of the computers in the hotel business center had Facebook.com saved in their Internet bookmarks. Even people in a tropical paradise are anxious to check Facebook.

For all of Facebook’s popularity, many of its users are still nervous about how to maintain their privacy on the network. Google’s rival social network, called Google+, answered the call for easier sharing control: Each post clearly shows which groups of friends will see it, and these groups are privately named by users.

This week I’ll dig into the latest updates on Facebook, which aim to ease the process of controlling one’s profile and privacy. An upcoming Facebook developer conference in two weeks is expected to reveal additional changes.

[ See post to watch video ]

Show Me the Viewers

One of the interface changes on Facebook is its more obvious way of showing users who will see their posts. Facebook takes a page from Google+ by better revealing sharing: It uses a drop-down menu beside each post that, by default, checkmarks either Public, Friends or Custom, and sharing can be changed with each post. The Custom setting can exclude or include certain groups, but people still must open it to adjust customized sharing. With Google +, though, all groups with whom content is shared are constantly visible underneath the post.

Facebook’s own blog hints at future improvements to this sharing awareness, saying that this drop-down menu will grow to include smaller groups of people with whom you may want to share so as to make it easier to choose the audience you want for certain posts, which sounds a lot like what Google+ offers.

Now, you can change the sharing settings associated with a post after it publishes to your profile. In the past, a post’s sharing settings were permanent once it was published, and changing it required deleting the entire post and re-posting with different sharing settings.

Location, Location, Location

A handy new feature in Facebook is the ability to add one’s location to each post. This feature was once limited to the Facebook app on mobile devices. Adding a location to a post like, “heading off for lunch with friends,” gives the post more contextual information. By tagging the photos I share on Facebook from my recent vacation with “Aruba,” I save myself the trouble of creating an Aruba album or adding a caption to each photo that says where it was captured.

Tag, You’re It

When Facebook first enabled tagging people in posts, a method used for mentioning someone so other people know that person is with you, numerous friends asked me how to do this since it wasn’t obvious. Before now, the way to tag someone was by placing the “@” symbol before a friend’s name while mentioning that friend in a post, or simply typing his or her name. Now, a small symbol below the window where users type posts shows an icon of a person with a “+” symbol. Clicking on that lets users type other people’s names to add to the post.

Facebook now lets you tag people in photos and posts even if you aren’t Facebook friends with them—and vice versa. Previously, you could only tag people if you were already Facebook friends.

Also, any post or photo in which you’re tagged by someone who isn’t a Facebook friend must first be approved by you. And Facebook takes this a step further by now letting you opt to review and approve any tag someone else tries to add to one of your Facebook posts or photos.

Before, any other Facebook friend could tag you or other people in your photos without your say-so. This content tag review isn’t on by default, so to turn it on, select Account (in the top right corner of your Facebook page) and then Privacy Settings. Next, edit the settings in How Tags Work and turn Profile Review on.

My Profile, My Way

One of my favorite new features is that it’s now easier for me to tweak my own profile page to include content I want on it. For example, a friend tagged me in one of her photos and one of my eyes was closed. Rather than un-tagging myself from my friend’s photo, which totally unidentifies me in the photo, I can now just remove the photo from my profile.

To do this, I clicked on the icon that appears at the right side of each post and selected Remove Post in the drop-down menu. This lets my friend keep the photo tagged with my name, but the photo doesn’t appear with my profile. The same is true for non-photo posts that include my name.

The Change-Up

Not all new features in Facebook will be well received. A former feature that let people click a “Link” button in a post to add a URL is gone as part of an effort to streamline the network. People can still share links in posts by pasting a URL into a post, but this doesn’t automatically remove the long URL, like that “Link” button did. Facebook is weighing whether to add the link capability back in posts.

Facebook isn’t currently as good as Google+ when it comes to showing users exactly which groups of friends will see their posted content. But many more people use Facebook—and social networks work best when the people you want to socialize with are using them—so Facebook currently maintains its go-to social-network status. With Google+ nipping at its heels, Facebook will surely further improve the way it displays sharing options.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

	BEFORE	NOW
Tagging people in posts	Type ‘@person’s name’ or just type the person’s name.	Select icon below text box to tag people; @ and typing name still work.
Add link to post	Click ‘Link’ to add Web link without also displaying long URL.	‘Link’ button is gone, so must paste URL into post.
Sharing with certain people	Groups of people with whom posts were shared couldn’t be changed after posting.	Sharing permissions for any post can be changed after posting.
Tagging people who aren’t friends	Impossible	Can tag other Facebook users even if they aren’t a friend. They must approve this tag.
Remove photo or post from profile	Only possible by untagging oneself.	Drop-down menu beside a tagged photo or post removes it from profile, keeps name tagged.

AsiaD Adventures: Walt and Kara in Seoul (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:01:33 +0000

This week, my AllThingsD partner-in-crime Walt Mossberg and I are in Asia as part of our planning for the upcoming AsiaD conference in the fall.

We’ll soon be announcing even more speakers for the event, which takes place in Hong Kong from Oct. 19-21.

And while AsiaD will have a Chinese flavor, by virtue of location and given how increasingly important the country is in the digital arena, we also want to make sure that the focus is pan-Asian.

Hence, our trip to South Korea — as well as to Tokyo, Japan — to meet companies, look at start-ups and get a feel for the key trends of these places.

In Seoul earlier this week, for example, Walt and I went to visit Samsung, the company that dominates most of tech in South Korea.

The giant conglomerate, which has been a major maker of televisions and other consumer electronics, is now aggressively competing in the smartphone and tablet arena.

It has partnered with Google Android as one of many handset and tablet makers using the mobile operating system. But from our talks with execs here, all Samsung seems to think about is Apple and its powerful iPhone and iPad, which it seems to consider its one and only rival.

We’ll be talking about all this and more at AsiaD, but until then, enjoy the video of our tour, which includes us as stars on the video wall at Samsung’s D’light exhibit in Seoul:

[ See post to watch video ]

South Korea Fines Apple Over LocationGate

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:45:29 +0000

The Korean Communications Commission has fined Apple for allegedly collecting location data from iPhone users without their express permission. Though a pittance at three million won (about $2,830), the penalty does set a precedent, marking the first time Apple has been punished for storing users’ unencrypted location information in their iPhones for up to a year.

The company, which reduced the length of that storage time to seven days with the release of iOS 4.3.3, denies that the iPhone was ever logging its users’ locations. Instead it claims the device was creating a crowdsourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers. “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone,” a company spokesman told Reuters. “Apple has never done so and has no plan to ever do so.”

Groupon Updates Privacy Rules, Including on Mobile Tracking and Sharing of Personal Information

Kara Swisher — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 06:33:10 +0000

Groupon sent out emails to its users this weekend, about changes it has made to its privacy statement and terms of use.

Among the most notable changes is more information about the Chicago-based social buying start-up’s collection and use of mobile location information.

Said Groupon:

“In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).”

In other words, if you let them, in order to improve the experience and make the Groupon Now app more useful, you’re being tracked.

This, of course, has been a dicey issue of late, most recently related to Apple and Google smartphones and what information they collect and retain.

In addition, with a pending IPO, Groupon is under all kinds of scrutiny and any big changes will be closely studied.

In addition, in its email to customers (see below in its entirety), the company said that it had broadened the definition of personal information to include your interests and habits and also that it may share that personal information with partners in new offering areas, such as travel deals with Expedia.

Groupon said it was also trying to improve readability of its consumer information and give greater transparency to its customers.

Here is the whole Groupon memo about the changes:

Wondering about Changes to the Groupon Privacy Statement?

We want to tell you a little more about some material changes we just made to the July 22, 2010 version of the Groupon Privacy Statement (the “Old Privacy Statement”) to create the new Groupon Privacy Statement (the “Updated Privacy Statement”).

In general, all of the changes to the Updated Privacy Statement were made to improve readability, provide greater transparency about our information handling practices, address some new types of relationships Groupon is forging and new technologies Groupon is using or may use, and to let you know about the privacy choices you have. Read on.

* Groupon continues to be a proud member of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. The Updated Privacy Statement contains a reference to the most current version of the TRUSTe Program Rules and includes some additional statements required by those Program Rules. As a TRUSTe Privacy Seal holder, Groupon is committed to complying with the Program Rules as applicable to its online privacy program.

* The Updated Privacy Statement replaces the phrase “Personally Identifiable Information” with “Personal Information” to improve readability and accuracy. (More on this below.)

* The Updated Privacy Statement clarifies that Personal Information is any information that could be used to identify, locate or contact an individual. This definition is broader than the definition in the Old Privacy Statement, which limited the concept of personally identifiable information to identification information in the context of certain defined identification activities. (Whew!) The broader definition in the Updated Privacy Statement reflects our dedication to protecting privacy in all areas of our business.

* The Updated Privacy Statement includes a definition of Personal Information and explains the types of Personal Information collected, used and disclosed by Groupon, namely “Contact Information,” “Relationship Information,” “Transaction Information,” “Financial Account Information,” and “Mobile Location Information.” These definitions provide more meaningful definition about the types of information we collect and how we classify information internally.

* The Updated Privacy Statement has shortened the section that goes on about how we use and disclose non-identifiable information. This change was made to improve readability so we could focus more on talking about what we do with Personal Information.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains information on Groupon’s collection and use of Mobile Location Information. In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).

* The Updated Privacy Statement presents Groupon’s disclosures of Personal Information in a more detailed and transparent fashion. The new “When and Why Groupon Discloses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement details the circumstances when Personal Information is shared with third parties in a comprehensive, bulleted-list format. This section reinforces Groupon’s commitment to protect privacy by generally limiting disclosures of Personal Information to our affiliates and services providers and to those merchants and business partners with whom our users interact.

* The Updated Privacy Statement omits the section in the Old Privacy Statement regarding disclosures of Personal Information to Google for remarketing purposes. Groupon does not provide Personal Information to Google for remarketing.

The Old Privacy Statement’s section on “Data Tracking” has been replaced with an expanded section on “Cookies and Related Technologies” to provide greater transparency around data collection technologies. This section contains information about all of the ways that we collect information using automated technologies, including cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, browser analysis tools, and web logs. The section is designed to educate readers about the types of data collected by each technology as well as how the data is used by Groupon. The Updated Privacy Statement clarifies that if automatically-collected data is associated with Personal Information, it is protected by the Updated Privacy Statement. This section also provides information about third party advertising relationships in a more readable form and includes a new paragraph regarding our relationship with Omniture.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains an expanded section on user choice. The “Your Choices” section in the Updated Privacy Statement provides readers with information on many different types of privacy choices that they can make, along with instructions for exercising the choice. This section also consolidates information on choices that was distributed throughout the Old Privacy Statement and contains a new link to the TRUSTe preferences page.

* The Updated Privacy Statement’s section on “Security of Personal Information” has been streamlined to more-simply state our commitment to maintaining a reasonable information security program with expected administrative, technical and physical controls.

* The Old Privacy Statement’s section “Updating and Correcting Personal Information” has been replaced with a new section “Accessing and Correcting Personal Information.” This section has been revised to improve readability and clarify the processes by which users can access, update and delete their Personal Information. This section of the Updated Privacy Statement also contains a new paragraph regarding data retention. This paragraph was added for clarity and to comply with the TRUSTe Program Rules.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains a new section giving “Notice to Residents of Countries Outside of the United States of America.” This section educates international users about the fact that Groupon is based in the U.S. so Personal Information may be transferred to the U.S. for processing.

* The “Miscellaneous Privacy Issues” section in the Old Privacy Statement has been deleted and the content it contains has been included in more appropriate, descriptive sections elsewhere in the policy. Also, we omitted the section discussing children’s information because Groupon is not designed for children and the Groupon deals are not offered to individuals under the age of majority in their states of residence. See our Terms of Use.

* The Updated Privacy Statement introduces a new contact mechanism for privacy-related inquiries: privacy@groupon.com. While general customer service questions should still be directed to support@groupon.com, the new address provides a way for us to respond to questions that our users have specifically about the privacy of their Personal Information.

And here is the email sent to users, titled “Updates to Privacy Statement and Terms of Use”:

We wanted to let you know that we’ve updated both our Privacy Statement and our Terms of Use. These new terms, which affect all Groupon users, accommodate our new products and services that allow us to offer you more relevant deals.

If you don’t feel like wading through long legal documents, here’s a summary of the notable changes, in plain English:

We’ve clarified that Groupon Now! and our other mobile apps may collect geo-location data. This lets us present you offers that are close by. See Sections 1 and 5 of the Privacy Statement.

We’ve broadened the definition of “personal information” to include your interests and habits, and provided additional details about how we collect and use your information. We’ve done this so that we can better understand what types of offers you’ll find valuable. See Section 1 of the Privacy Statement.

You may know that we’ve started working with partners to offer Groupon users new deal categories — for example, travel deals with Expedia. Our new privacy statement explains that we may share your personal information with these partners if you subscribe to special communications or buy deals in these new deal categories. See Section 4 of the Privacy Statement.

We’ve updated our Terms of Use to help you understand the expiration policies for different vouchers, including Groupon NOW! vouchers. This explains, for example, that if you don’t use a Groupon NOW! voucher within 30 days we’ll refund the purchase amount. See Section 7 of the Terms of Use.

We also clarified our expectations to ensure that our customers and visitors use the services on our website in a way that keeps the experience good for everyone. For example, we’ve prohibited abusive practices like opening multiple accounts, submitting false information and other practices that we think detract from everyone’s experience with us. See Section 5 of the Terms of Use.

Chewsy Tells Us What We Really Want to Know: What's Good to Eat Nearby

Liz Gannes — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:20 +0000

My most frequent use of location-based apps like Foursquare and Yelp is to look up reviews of what’s the most awesome dish to order at a restaurant.

The iPhone app Chewsy drills down on that problem specifically, and is a bit more useful in that it shows the best dishes at all the venues in a neighborhood before you pick where to eat.

Chewsy co-founder Chaitanya Sareen cutely calls this “the last-mile problem of restaurants.”

Chewsy, which today put out a new version with social sharing features, has a view of the top-rated dishes nearby, with pictures, ratings and reviews. (This is marginally different from competitor Foodspotting, which focuses primarily on pictures of food and doesn’t really have ratings or reviews.)

The problem is, Chewsy is far less widely used than many other location-based social and reviews sites. With only 50,000 users, very few dishes are even covered. And while folks like Foursquare might not be mainstream yet, they have mindshare and deep pockets; Foursquare just announced $50 million in new funding today.

Chewsy is actually a side project, though; the co-founders have day jobs at Microsoft. And for the record, they thought the egg sandwich at my local cafe was kind of bland.

Glympse Shares Its Location: The Bank

Ina Fried — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:37:44 +0000

Although there is a lot of kerfuffle around the privacy implications of location-based services, the fact of the matter is there are times when that is exactly what one wants to share, especially if it is just for a short period of time.

Glympse, which has an Android and iPhone service that does just that, said Wednesday that it had raised a further $7.5 million in funding. In addition to announcing that Series B round led by Menlo Ventures and Ignition Partners, the company also noted that it had passed the one million user mark.

The service allows users to share their real-time location for up to four hours with selected friends. It’s useful for, say, letting someone who is meeting you see just how late (and lost) you really are.

And if you are somewhere worth bragging about, you can even post your exact whereabouts to Facebook and Twitter.

Google Lets More People Know That They Just Missed Their Bus

Ina Fried — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:49:30 +0000

For those who have a smartphone and depend on public transit in San Francisco, life just got a bit easier.

Google said Wednesday it is adding real-time transit info to Google Maps in San Francisco and five additional cities (Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin, Italy).

“Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates,” Google said in a blog post.

In San Francisco, such information was already available on a site called Nextmuni.com, but the integration with maps can be handier than entering in one’s location and preferred route by hand.

Industry-backed Group Looks to Help App Developers Create Privacy-Friendly Policies

Ina Fried — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:30:41 +0000

With all the attention being given to mobile devices and privacy, one industry group is trying to help individual app developers that might want to do the right thing but don’t know where to start when it comes to privacy policies and other best practices.

The industry-backed Future of Privacy Forum is launching a new ApplicationPrivacy.org Web site on Thursday that will give developers tools to create their own privacy policies as well as links to other important documentation, such as the privacy-related terms that are part of the major smartphone platform agreements. The Web site is being created with financial backing from Zynga, Facebook, AT&T, Google, Intel and TrustE.

“This was an area where we thought we could do something useful,” said Future of Privacy Forum Jules Polonetsky, a former chief privacy officer for DoubleClick and AOL.

While much of the attention has been focused on the industry heavyweights, such as the OS makers like Apple and Google, or perhaps the carriers and hardware makers, Polonetsky argues that the app makers are also an important part of the equation.

“The application developers are getting the data and using it and are certainly a key part of the process, but nobody is talking to them,” Polonetsky said.

Indeed, there are all kinds of apps out there that are collecting data well beyond that needed for their application, including location-based data, access to the Internet, phone dialer and other user information. Of course, there is also legitimate concern about the actions of the bigger players in the industry, including the platform players, about how they are collecting, storing and using data gathered from mobile devices.

Two Senate subcommittees have already held hearings on the matter, with Senator Al Franken calling for Apple and Google to demand app developers put privacy policies in place.

Polonetsky said he knows some of the rules in this area have yet to be written, but said his group’s Web site at least gives people a starting point.

“Certainly all the rules don’t exist yet,” he said.

But it is not exactly a blank canvas either. Polonetsky noted that a lot of this feels like déjà vu for him, having been through a similar period more than a decade ago when concerns arose over how much data Web sites were collecting and sharing with Internet ad networks. Now, he said, the same attention is being paid to apps and mobile ad networks.

Tech Giants Defend Privacy Practices

Amy Schatz — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:18:56 +0000

Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. defended their privacy practices Thursday to lawmakers considering how to update privacy laws to include more protections for Internet users.

At a Senate hearing on mobile privacy issues, lawmakers grilled technology executives on their policies and how they share consumer information with other companies. The hearing comes amid recent revelations that Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones routinely collect information about the location of consumer cellphones. Apple has since limited the data it collects.

“I know you can shut off your location services but that doesn’t do the trick because we want to use them,” said Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), who recently introduced a privacy bill along with Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), which would establish consumer online privacy rights. “We still need a privacy standard. We still need basic rules of the road.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Senate Not Done Questioning Apple and Google on Privacy

Ina Fried — Tue, 17 May 2011 01:17:12 +0000

If you missed Apple and Google being grilled in Washington over privacy issues last week, you are in luck.

The two tech giants are due back on Capitol Hill on Thursday to appear before a different Senate subcommittee. This time, they are also slated to be joined by a Facebook representative.

The hearing, titled Consumer Privacy and Protection in the Mobile Marketplace, is slated for 10 am on Thursday before the Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance subcommittee of the Senate’s Science, Commerce and Technology committee.

Slated to appear are Google public policy director Alan Davidson, Apple government affairs VP Catherine Novelli and Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, along with representatives of the Federal Trade Commission, Common Sense Media and the Association for Competitive Technology.

It’s the latest outgrowth of a mini-furor over how mobile devices make use of location-based data. The recent interest in the issue began after attention was focused on a little-known location database stored on the iPhone as well as the fact that Google and others collect location-based data to build global databases of things like traffic and the location of Wi-Fi signals. By the time Apple noted, a week later, that it was not tracking individual users and that the data customers were seeing was a locally-stored subset of a global crowdsourced database, lawsuits had been filed and regulators were already calling for hearings.

To get more background on the issue, here’s the reader we prepared ahead of last week’s hearings.

EU Panel to Affirm Location Is Private

John W. Miller — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:47:25 +0000

The European Union’s top advisory body on online privacy will issue an opinion this month saying that information collected by phone and Internet companies on customer locations must be treated like names, birthdays and other personal data, EU officials say.

That means smartphone giants like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. will likely have to obtain user consent before gathering the data, delete the information after a certain period of time and keep it anonymous.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Latest Treasure Is Location Data

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Julia Angwin — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:00:43 +0000

Cellphones that collect people’s locations are only the tip of the iceberg: Auto makers, insurance companies and even shopping malls are experimenting with new ways to use this kind of data.

Location information is emerging as one of the hottest commodities in the tracking industry–the field of companies that are building businesses based on people’s data.

Some companies are using the data to build better maps or analyze traffic patterns. Others send users advertisements for services near where they are located. Some insurers hope to use the data to provide discounts to better drivers.

On Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans a hearing to consider whether a federal law is required to protect consumer privacy on mobile devices. The hearing was spurred by the public outcry over recent findings that Apple Inc. and Google Inc. gather location-related data from iPhones and Android phones. Both companies are set to testify.

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Required Reading: What to Know Ahead of Today's Apple/Google Hearing

Ina Fried — Tue, 10 May 2011 10:00:35 +0000

A busy tech week on Capitol Hill kicks off later Tuesday as a Senate subcommittee looks into issues related to location-based data, privacy and mobile devices, with both Google and Apple set to testify.

The hearings are a response to a sudden spike in concern about the issue following revelations that the iPhone was storing a great deal of location information and over just how much location information Apple and Google are collecting and for what purposes.

To help get people ready for the hearings, Mobilized has pulled together some recent and not so recent comments on the matter that help frame the issues. (Of course, All Things D will be updating things from D.C. as well. As I’ll be at Google I/O, colleague Arik Hessedahl will be monitoring the hearings; the proceedings will also be Webcast.)

Now, on to your required readings.

First off, here’s a summary of who will be speaking on Tuesday. The biggest names are Apple and Google. Apple’s representative is Bud Tribble, a VP of software technology. Though far from a household name, Tribble is notable as one of the members of the original Mac development team and worked at NeXT and Sun Microsystems, before eventually rejoining Steve Jobs at Apple. Google will be represented by Alan Davidson, a director of public policy. Also set to appear are a few policy groups and representatives of the FTC and DOJ.

So what will Apple and Google have to say for themselves?

Well, Apple’s most detailed comments on the location and privacy issue came a couple of weeks ago in a statement it released and from an interview Steve Jobs and top executives did with Mobilized. The most clear point Apple has sought to get across is that it is not, and has no intention of, tracking individual iPhones or users.

“We haven’t been tracking anybody’s location,” Jobs said in the interview. Apple also lets users turn on and off location services for each application, including Apple’s own apps and provides iPhone owners a way to see which programs have recently been using such information. Although Apple said it is not collecting personal information, it did say it used the collective location data to build a crowdsourced database of cellphone and Wi-Fi signals and that the company is building a traffic database. Jobs also declined to say if Apple was working on any other services that tap into collective data. Apple has also since updated the iPhone operating system to reduce the amount of location information stored on its devices.

Google, for its part, hasn’t had too much new to say on the matter since commenting to Mobilized on April 22.

“All location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user,” Google said in that statement. “We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices. Any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user.”

Potentially even more interesting than recent comments, however, are comments that Jobs and Google executives have made in the past. The leaders of both companies addressed the issue last year, with Jobs speaking at our D8 conference and Google’s Andy Rubin speaking at D: Dive Into Mobile. We’ve cut a special highlight reel together with both executives’ relevant comments.

[ See post to watch video ]

As for what to watch for at the hearings on Tuesday, there are a lot of questions that have yet to be answered by Google, Apple and others in the industry. One of those is what the companies are committing to doing or not doing with people’s information, both individually and collectively. Both companies’ privacy policies give them wide latitude with how to use location-based information once a user opts to receive location-based services. The key is what limits the companies are willing to impose on themselves–and any that the assembled lawmakers may be interested in adding.

And don’t forget, Tuesday is just the start of a tech-filled week in Congress. On Wednesday, a different Senate subcommittee will take a look at AT&T’s proposed $39 billion deal to acquire T-Mobile USA.

Hold the Sports Phone: Ross Levinsohn Not Leaving Yahoo for HBO

Kara Swisher — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:45:36 +0000

While there has been a report on a boxing news site that Yahoo Americas head Ross Levinsohn was leaving the Internet giant to run HBO’s sports unit, it’s not so.

Trust BoomTown on this one–I have all top Yahoo execs embedded with Apple iOS and Google Android location tracking devices.

Apparently, calling to ask about such a big move is tough one-two for BoxingScene.com, but Yahoo confirmed the non-departure and Levinsohn did too in a brief phone conversation.

“I’m not leaving,” he said.

Mr. Smith Getting Company as ATT, T-Mobile, Sprint, Apple and Google All Head to Washington

Ina Fried — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:00:53 +0000

There will be no shortage of tech companies speaking in Washington next week, as separate Senate subcommittees hold hearings on two major issues in the tech industry.

On Wednesday, four cellular company CEOs are set to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee at a hearing looking into AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. A day earlier, Apple and Google are set to appear before a different subcommittee to explore issues related to privacy and location-based information.

According to a witness list released on Thursday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and Cellular South CEO Victor “Hu” Meena are all scheduled to testify at Wednesday’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Also on the list are Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge and Larry Cohen, head of the Communication Workers of America.

And, if AT&T and T-Mobile needed any more hint that this would not be a friendly audience, they need look no further than the hearing’s title: “The AT&T/T-Mobile Merger: Is Humpty Dumpty Being Put Back Together Again?”

And that’s not the only big tech hearing on Capitol Hill next week. On Tuesday, representatives of Apple and Google are scheduled to appear before the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law at a hearing about location-based data practices

The hearing comes in the wake of concerns over how both companies are handling location-based information gathered on cell phones and tablets. CEO Steve Jobs told Mobilized in an interview last week that Apple would be testifying before Congress.

“They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course,” Jobs said. Apple has maintained that it isn’t tracking anyone and that location data found on the iPhone was the relevant portion of a broad, crowdsourced location database. Apple has since released an update to the iPhone operating system that limits the amount of such information stored on the device and ensured that all data is deleted when users opt not to use location-based services.

Google has also defended its handling of information, arguing that the information it collects is necessary to provide location-based services.

Mobilized Pays a Visit To Tech News Today to Chat Apple, Sony and More

Ina Fried — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:15:29 +0000

On Wednesday, I had a chance to reunite with former CNET colleague Tom Merritt as a guest on his Tech News Today show.

We had fun bantering on a range of issues from Apple’s iPhone OS update to the Sony PlayStation Network woes and more.

For those who missed it, the episode is embedded below and also reachable here. I’m told if you look closely, one or both of my cats make a cameo.

Apple Updates iPhone OS to Reduce Amount of Location Data Stored on Device

Ina Fried — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Apple on Wednesday released a promised update to the iPhone operating system aimed to fix what the company says was a bug that allowed months worth of location data to be stored on the device and backed up to a computer.

The update, iOS 4.3.3, reduces the amount of information that is stored on the device. Apple said it probably doesn’t need to store more than a week’s worth of information on the device to aid in various location-based services.

Apple’s iOS update also deletes the location data cache when a user turns off location-based services and no longer backs the cache up to a computer via iTunes. The location information is used on the device to help speed services such as mapping, but Apple said it is also using the information in aggregate to build a forthcoming traffic service. Apple said last week that the coming update would ensure that users have the choice whether to take part in the crowdsourced location database that Apple is building.

“If people don’t want to participate in things, they will be able to turn location services off,” CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview with Mobilized. “Once we get a bug that we found fixed, their phone will not be collecting or contributing any crowdsourced information. But nor will it be calculating location.”

Concern about location-based information on the iPhone arose last month after researchers noted what appeared to be a log of everywhere the iPhone had been over a long period of time. However, Jobs pointed out that the information was actually the relevant portion of a crowdsourced location database–related to where an iPhone had been, but not its exact location. In some cases, Jobs said, the location points were as much as 100 miles from where an iPhone had been.

“We haven’t been tracking anybody’s location and the files they found on these phones, as we explained, it turned out were basically files we have built through anonymous, crowdsourced information that we collect from the tens of millions of iPhones out there,” Jobs said in the interview.

Factual Hires Yahoo's Location Guru and Grabs A Googler

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 03 May 2011 12:30:33 +0000

Factual, the Los Angeles-based start-up I like to describe as a data mercenary, has just announced two key hires who will open up an engineering office in Silicon Valley.

The first is Tyler Bell, the former head of Yahoo’s Geo Technology Group that was responsible for launching Yahoo’s location data services like Placemaker and Geoplanet. He’s joining Factual as Director of Product, and is a former archeologist, but I’ve yet to find a picture of him wearing a Fedora a la Indiana Jones. Update: Such a picture does exist! It has been added below!

The other hire is Artem Boytsov, who was one of two engineers who created Google Trends and also worked on the engineering teams for Google Images and AdWords.

Factual, you’ll recall, is the latest venture founded by Gil Elbaz, who sold his first company, Applied Semantics, to Google in 2003, where it evolved into AdSense.

I use the phrase “data mercenary” as sort of a loose way of describing what Factual does. If you’re developing an application or a Web service, you need lots of data. Where to get it? That’s a big problem. Factual is building several databases, and the first out of the gate is built around location data, but more for other industry verticals are on the way.

Late last year Elbaz raised raised $25 million in venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, SV Angel, and former Disney president Michael Ovitz. Now we see what he’s going to do with some of that money: Hire lots of engineers!

And here it is: Former Archeologist, and new Factual director of product Tyler Bell doing his best Indiana Jones imitation!

BoomTown on KQED's "iPhone or iSpy" Radio Show (Audio)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:02:39 +0000

The Apple iOS and Google Android smartphone location-tracking kerfuffle. Smarty-pants commentators. KQED’s “Forum” radio show with interviewer Michael Krasny yesterday.

Go!

QA: Jobs and Apple Execs on Tracking Down the Facts About iPhones and Location

Ina Fried — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:12:34 +0000

Although Apple was silent for several days after researchers raised issues about location information being stored on the iPhone, that wasn’t because it was ignoring the issue.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs told Mobilized that the company wanted to figure out exactly what was and wasn’t happening, and then figure out the best way to explain a complex set of issues to its customers.

“We’re an engineering-driven company,” Jobs said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “When people accuse us of things, the first thing we want to do is find out the truth. That took a certain amount of time to track all of these things down. And the accusations were coming day by day. By the time we had figured this all out, it took a few days. Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later.”

During the phone interview, Jobs and senior vice presidents Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall talked about what information the iPhone is and isn’t collecting, some lessons learned and the need for the industry to do a better job of explaining things to customers.

Jobs declined to say whether he thought Google or others needed to do a better job on privacy issues, but did note that Apple’s approach is different.

“Some of them don’t do what we do,” Jobs said. “That’s for sure.”

Jobs said that the company is leading the way when it comes to privacy and said Apple looks forward to testifying before any congressional inquiries on such issues. During the talk, the execs also touched briefly on the release of the long-delayed white iPhone. Also, Jobs declined to comment on when he might return full time to Apple.

Here is an edited transcript of the interview:

One of the challenges here is that, by their nature, location-based services require location information, but that information is highly sensitive and can be used in a lot of ways. How does Apple approach this balance?

Jobs: I think we do two things. Number one is we get consent from users if we are going to use location, or we never use location. That’s what we do. It’s very straightforward.

We haven’t been tracking anybody’s location and the files they found on these phones, as we explained, it turned out were basically files we have built through anonymous, crowdsourced information that we collect from the tens of millions of iPhones out there.

We build a crowdsourced database of Wi-Fi and cell tower hot spots, but those can be over 100 miles away from where you are. Those are not telling you anything abut your location. That’s what people saw on the phone and mistook it for location.

Is there anything that you guys have learned over the last week or so and take away from this?

Forstall: One thing I think we have learned is that the cache we had on the system–the point of that cache, is we do all the location calculations on the phone itself so no location calculations are done separately. You can imagine in an ideal world the entire crowdsourced database is on the phone and it just never has to talk to a server to do these calculations (or) to even get the cache.

What we do is we cache a subset of that. We picked a size, around 2MB, which is less than half a song. It turns out it was fairly large and could hold items for a long time.

We had that protected on the system. It had root protection and was sandboxed from any other application. But if someone hacks their phone and jailbreaks it, they can get to this and misunderstand the point of that.

It’s all anonymous and cannot be traced back to any individual phone or person. But we need to be even more careful about what files are on the phone, even if they are protected.

Jobs: As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education. We haven’t, as an industry, done a very good job educating people, I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such, (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week. I think the right time to educate people is when there is no problem. I think we will probably ask ourselves how we can do some of that, as an industry.

A bunch of folks on the regulatory side, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, said they are going to look into this. Do you guys plan on testifying before Congress? How active do you personally and does Apple want to be?

Jobs: I think Apple will be testifying. They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course. I think it is great that they are investigating this and I think it will be interesting to see how agressive or lazy the press is on this in terms of investigating the rest of the participants in the industry and finding out what they do. Some of them don’t do what we do. That’s for sure.

It seems like one of the issues is on the app level. You have apps that do as little, on the Android side, as providing battery information and want access to the dialer and location information. Do you think consumers ought to be paying attention to the individual apps they are using and what sorts of permissions those apps (require)?

Jobs: We think so, and that’s why we were the first to institute a procedure that cannot be worked around by applications where if any application wants access to location data, it has to ask the user first. It has to get the user’s permission on a per-application basis.

You mentioned in the statement today that Apple is using the collective location data to build a collective traffic database. At our D8 Conference last year you talked about the importance of full disclosure by the industry. Do you think Apple and other companies need to let people know specifically what you guys are doing with the information and choose whether to participate in these commercial projects, or do you think Apple and others should have fairly broad use of anonymized data?

Jobs: If people don’t want to participate in things, they will be able to turn location services off. Once we get a bug that we found fixed, their phone will not be collecting or contributing any crowdsourced information. But nor will it be calculating location.

Schiller: Sometimes it helps people to understand an analogy that describes what these things are like because they are so new. I would think an analogy of a crowdsourced database is every time you walk into a retail store, many retailers have a clicker that counts how many people come in and out of the store. Nobody really cares about that because it is completely anonymous. It is not personal data. It is not anything to worry about. It’s not something that people feel is private because it is really not about them. It’s a coagulated total of all traffic. These crowdsourced databases are sort of like that.

Things like that aren’t so scary when you think about them in everyday terms.

Is traffic the only thing you are using that collective data for, or do you have other plans?

Jobs: We mention the traffic service and I think that is all we are going to mention at this point in time before we have something to announce.

But you are not saying that is the only thing you might use it for?

Jobs: We are building a crowdsourced database based on traffic and that is what we are saying.

Is there a need for any finer level of control, or is the on-off switch the right way to go?

Forstall: We are really vigilant about privacy and location and we have worked really hard to make the experience as transparent as possible and give the user full control. As you say, whenever any user wants any application to access their location, the user has to approve that on a per-application basis. That’s even true for Apple’s built-in applications.

In addition, whenever any application uses location, an indicator appears in the status bar. In settings, you can see a list of every single application on the phone that a user has approved for location and the ones that they have not approved for location. They can actually go and turn it off temporarily for an app, if they like. In addition, any application which has used location within the last 24 hours is shown, with an indicator in settings. So a user can know which applications that a user has approved for location have actually used location recently. We think this is incredibly fine grain and the best out there.

Steve, how active have you been in examining this issue over the past couple of weeks?

Jobs: It hasn’t been a couple of weeks. This all started last Wednesday and we put out our response this morning. It took us slightly less than a week. Scott and Phil and I have worked together over this last week, first to investigate the problem.

We’re an engineering-driven company. When people accuse us of things, the first thing we want to do is find out the truth. That took a certain amount of time to track all of these things down. And the accusations were coming day by day. By the time we had figured this all out, it took a few days. Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later.

I was curious if you have an ETA about when you would be coming back full time?

Jobs: Look, we’re here to talk about location today, not me.

PREVIOUSLY:

Interview: Apple CEO Steve Jobs on How the iPhone Does and Doesn't Use Location Information

Ina Fried — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:55:07 +0000

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday that the iPhone database that people have assumed was their personal information was, in fact, the relevant chunk of a global crowdsourced database that the company uses to deliver location-based information.

“We haven’t been tracking anyone,” Jobs said in a telephone interview with Mobilized on Wednesday. “The files they found on these phones, as we explained, it turned out were basically files we have built through anonymous, crowdsourced information that we collect from the tens of millions of iPhones out there.”

Last week, researchers drew attention to a file on iPhones that contained a trove of location data stretching back months, and concerns grew that the iPhone was keeping a record of everywhere it had been. Jobs reiterated that hasn’t been the case and highlighted Apple’s strict policies regarding how location information is used. The company did find a bug was leading this data cache to be stored even on phones that have location data turned off and pledged to fix that in a future update as well as to keep a smaller amount of data stored on the phone.

Jobs declined to comment on the practices of other companies, including Google, but stressed that Apple requires users to turn on location-based information and allow it for each application. It also gives people a way to see which applications have been using such information both at the time and over the past 24 hours.

Earlier on Wednesday, Apple issued a statement, noting that it isn’t tracking iPhone users’ locations, but acknowledging some bugs in the way location information has been collected and stored. It promised to change some of its practices in forthcoming software updates.

Jobs said that the tech industry hasn’t done a good job of educating users on what has been a fairly complicated issue.

“As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education,” Jobs said. “We haven’t–as an industry–done a very good job educating people, I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such, (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week.”

He said Apple looks forward to testifying before Congress and other regulatory bodies and said the company will do what it can to clarify things further.

“I think Apple will be testifying,” Jobs said. “They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course.”

Jobs also said it will be interesting to see how aggressively the press tracks the issue and looks at what other players in the industry do.

“Some of them don’t do what we do,” Jobs said. “That’s for sure.”

Jobs was joined in the interview by fellow Apple executives Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller. I’ll have a more detailed post with comments from all three executives up shortly.

PREVIOUSLY:

Apple Breaks its Silence on Location-gate, Plans To Ship White iPhone on Thursday

Illinois AG Presses Apple, Google for Location Data Details

Google: Of Course Our Location-based Services Require Your Location Info

My iPhone Is Tracking Me? That’s Outrageous, But Also Kind of Cool.

Apple Breaks its Silence on Location-gate, Plans To Ship White iPhone on Thursday

Ina Fried — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:44:59 +0000

Apple on Wednesday responded to concerns over location-based information captured and sent from the iPhone and other devices, insisting that it never tracks its users, but the company also said it plans to make changes to the way the iPhone stores location information in a forthcoming software update.

In a statement, Apple said that it was a bug that caused the iPhone to store location data even on phones when a user chose not to enable location services. In a separate statement, Apple said it plans to start selling the long-delayed white version of the iPhone 4 on Thursday. It will come in both Verizon and AT&T versions and sell for the same price as its darker-hued sibling.

As part of Apple’s statement on the location issue, the company clarified that the device is not tracking the user’s location specifically, but rather caching data that can help speed the process of locating the user in the future. However, the company said it doesn’t need to store as much location information as it has been and plans to change this with a forthcoming software update. That update, due in the coming weeks, will also address the issue of location information being stored on devices that have elected to keep location services turned off.

“The iPhone is not logging your location,” Apple said. “Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.”

The company said that doing so is better than just trying to locate the phone using GPS data alone, which can take up to several minutes.

“(The) iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements),” Apple said. “These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.”

The company said that the fact that a year or more worth of that data was kept on the phone was also a bug and said that it doesn’t think it needs to keep more than seven days’ worth of information. It plans to change that with the forthcoming software update. In the next major update of the iPhone operating system it will also start encrypting this data, it said.

Apple said it is also using the data in aggregate to build traffic maps.

“Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years,” Apple said.

Google has also come under fire over the information that it receives from Android devices. However, it noted on Friday that it only gets information from users who opt-in to location-based products. Google also maintains that the data it gets, although linked to an individual device, is not tied to a user’s account or other personal information.

Apple customers reacted with a mixture of outrage and excitement last week to the revelation that their iPhones (and 3G-equipped iPads) have been storing a record of everywhere they had been. While some bemoaned the potential privacy concerns around such information, others rushed to use a program that let them visualize the data, with many of those opting to share that information on Twitter, blogs and other spots on the Internet.

Since then, regulators and privacy experts across the globe have begun asking questions, questions that until now Apple had yet to answer.

Here’s Apple’s full statement on location services.

Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.

1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.

3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?
The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update section below).

5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.

6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third parties?
We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).

10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

Software Update

Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:

-reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
-ceases backing up this cache, and
-deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.

In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.

A "Probe in Your Pocket"? Apple's Steve Jobs and Google's Andy Rubin Talk Smartphone Privacy at D8 and Dive.

Kara Swisher — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:19:41 +0000

We’ve done a lot of onstage interviews at our D: All Things Digital conferences with the leaders of tech.

That includes Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google smartphone kingpin Andy Rubin, both of whom are now dealing with the fallout over a series of reports that iOS and Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to both companies.

The privacy implications are obvious.

As Mobilized’s Ina Fried wrote last week:

Questions about what location-based information Android makes use of followed reports that Apple’s iPhone and 3G-equipped iPads are storing a history of location information in an unencrypted database on the device. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday noted that both Android and Apple devices are sending certain location information back to the companies.

In addition to that issue, there are separate issues over the length of time such information is stored, both on the device and by Apple and Google. The iPhone (and 3G-equipped iPads) appear to be storing a long-term directory of where a device has been and keeping that information in an unencrypted database. Google keeps a small cache of such information, to allow mapping and search to work even if a device temporarily loses GPS signal. However, it doesn’t keep a long-term record on the device.

That’s why we cut this video of Jobs and Rubin talking about privacy, specifically and respectively at the eighth D: All Things Digital last summer and at D: Dive Into Mobile in December.

“We take privacy extremely seriously,” said Jobs, who addressed the smartphone location data issue in particular. “A lot of people in [Silicon] Valley think we’re old-fashioned about this.”

And I pressed Rubin on Android being a “probe in your pocket,” and he said its mobile open source operating system did not collect data, although Google services did.

“I think this is a trust and verify,” Rubin noted.

Both Jobs and Rubin make some pretty strong privacy-related statements in these videos, so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out:

[ See post to watch video ]