That sounds liek a pretty bad argument to me.
If Apple can win on this, any other company can just harvest any information, whether or not the people signal their opposition... as long as they can't demonstrate that it "causes harm to them".

To me, that data harvesting causes harm because it stresses these people. I hope Apple loses on that one (but if it were Samsung, it'd be the same, it's not an Apple issue, it's a privacy rights issue).

I'm pretty sure anyone who bashed Brin yesterday about those "stalking glasses" will agree with me that Apple's doing the same mistake as he, here.

Meanwhile that little "problem" where Google allows developers to know your real name and e-mail (among other things) seems to have disappeared.

I don't give a shit if a company knows my location. What I care about is does a company have policies in place where you must agree to share your e-mail address with a third party. Facebook and Google make you share it with Zynga if you want to play their game. Apple doesn't. This I like. This is all I care about.

Can a UDID be mapped back to a real person? If all the tracking shows is that *an iPhone* has been to these places, I don't see the problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wakefinance 


Wow, mister privacy is ok with a breach as long as it's Apple allowing the breaching? I seem to recall another recent thread where you claimed that people were foolish to let Google anonymously track their location using the same cell tower method that you claim here is innocuous. Inconsistencies in your opinion aside, you don't have to physically hand someone your phone and let them look at your location history for it to be accessed. This lawsuit came about because apps were accessing this information, giving developers remote access.

But in this case, the data was never "harvested" for Apple.  It was available only to the user of the phone and was NOT, as you claim, available to other apps using the phone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


So you've shown that you have a good imagination. I never said any such thing.

There's a world of difference between the two matters. Apple was simply stating which cell tower was closest (which was actually necessary for decent phone service, anyway). Google collects mountains of private information about you specifically and what you are doing.

If you can't see the difference between "you were somewhere around Boston 6 months ago" and "you purchased $52 worth of lingerie at 1273 Bowdon St on January 13", then there's no point even discussing it.

Furthermore, Apple didn't do anything with that data. Google routinely sells it.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/156107/google-steps-further-into-the-hardware-fray-announces-touchscreen-chromebook-pixel/80#post_2282196

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 

Every time you use Google Maps, they track your location. Every time you use their search, you become a target for ads. Everything in your gmail account is theirs to use as they wish.

 

As far as location is concerned, Google also only collects cell tower information unless you are in the Maps application, actively using GPS, which is the same case on the iPhone.

 

Again, Google does not sell your information.  They use it to sell ads, but the clients whose ads were sold to you never know to whom those ads were sold or even know information about "anonymous phone user #5698441538".  Any proof you have to the contrary would be accepted, but since, as I said in the same thread from which I linked your quote, I work as an intern for an e-commerce company that places ads on search engines including Google, I know you won't find any.