The storm in a tea-cup of the week is the fact that Apple is now collecting location data to make available to application suppliers, and of course to use for Apple’s advertising purposes.
The reason that it’s as storm in a tea cup is because handset owners need services which know where they are. Yes it would be way better if this was carried out in a standards based manner, and there was some form of official sanction to the method of storing and keeping safe location data.
Apple says the data is anonymous and does not personally identify users and while we understand that such assurances in the past, for instance from search companies about the way they retain searches, have been leaked and the leaks used to work out which person has conducted which searches, location data is far less specific and it is something we have needed for a long time, and anyway where IS the standard? It is long overdue. Such a standard may well emerge from Apple revealing how much data it keeps and how it keeps it, and how it keeps it safe.
But we know that Apple has been collecting location data for a while but has only now moved the notices about this from the user agreement for various Apple devices to those on its download services.
On any mobile device, when adverts are served to mobile users, the advertising operator can find out which base station is connecting the user at any given time, so while it’s not possible to tell what house someone is in, it’s possible to see which district or town they are in.
The move was revealed when Apple announced an updated version of its privacy policy, which now says that both Apple and unspecified “partners and licensees” may collect and store user location data. All Apple devices allow the user to switch off location services, so any single person at a point in time can still hide where they are.
However many users will blindly click on ‘Accept’ when the new customer agreement appears the next time they download an apps or some media from iTunes. Customers are not given an opt out, but must agree or they cannot download anything more from the store.
A lot of iPhone apps ask users for their location, and this is seen as a way to take this unnecessary step out of the equation ‘ the device can volunteer that information from GPS. Most users on social networks want their friends to know where they are. Some very much don’t and the decision should be an unpressurized decision, not an enforced one.
We might paint Apple as big and bad and likely to abuse this data, but it says in its privacy policy that it only uses personal information to improve services, content, and advertising. And this is more and more about advertising. We suspect that Apple would be fairly open with authorities on how it goes about what is a fairly trivial and arbitrary decision on how to collect this data, and might even be open to adjust its method if told to do so. What is important for Apple is that advertising based on only delivering to people in one location often yields just as much response as broad based advertising that goes to 20 times the number of people. In effect, if all inventory in all locations can be sold, that makes this form of advertising worth about 20 times what broadcast advertising is.
Apple has just rolled out its new advertising platform, iAd, for iOS 4 and will almost certainly have adjusted this system to use location information. The next move to look for is a broad based way of local stores buying into local Apple iAd advertising in what is likely to be a landgrab for advertising relationships which will undermine all other form of localized ads, such as local newspapers and in the US, radio stations.
What’s funny is that Google already admits to collecting this type of data on Android phones, which it has to when you interact with Google Maps, and while Google is widely thought of as Big Brother in the US, nothing has been done to stop this. Expect the next generation of the mobile advertising war to be geo-based.
Two congressmen in the US have sent a letter asking if Apple’s privacy policy adheres to clauses in communications law in the US.