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Apple

Suit brought against Apple over iPad and iPhone user 'tracking'

Two Apple customers have launched a suit against the company, asking for an injunction to disable the tracking in devices – and damages for violating their rights.

TWO AMERICAN MEN have launched the first lawsuit against Apple Inc over its controversial location tracking on its iPad and iPhone.

Vikram Ajjampur, an iPhone user from Florida, USA, and William Devito, an iPad user from New York, filed a lawsuit against the company on 22 April in federal court in Tampa, Florida.

A report emerged last week from two computer programmers alleging that Apple’s iOS4 operating system is recording latitude – longitude coordinates along with a timestamp.

But as of yet there is no evidence that the company is storing this evidence on databases owned by Apple.

The lawsuit documents can be viewed via the website MobileCrunch.com.

In the court documents, the plaintiffs allege that users of Apple’s iPhones and iPads were unaware of their locations being tracked and did not consent to it.

They also state that “Apple collects the location information covertly,  surreptitiously and in violations of law”.

They say that the accessibility of unencrypted information places users “at serious risk of privacy invasions, including stalking”.

The men say they are bringing the court action “to stop Apple’s illegal and intrusive scheme of collecting personal location information” and to get an injunction to require Apple to disable the tracking in devices.

They also want damages for “violations of their statutory and common law privacy rights”.

They say they are bringing the action on behalf of themselves and “proposed plaintiff class members”, who are:

all persons in the USA who have purchased, owned or carried around an iPhone with the iOS 4 operating system or a 3G iPad between the release of those products for sale by Apple and the present. Excluded from the Class are those who purchased the products for resale; members of the federal judiciary and their relatives; and Defendant’s officers, directors and employees.

This could mean millions of people, as 59 million people now own an iPhone, while the iPad has 10 million users.

Apple has not yet commented on the tracker or on the above lawsuit.

Read the full court documents here>

Smile! Your iPhone’s watching you…>

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