“The US Federal Trade Commission signalled that Apple’s collection of geographic data from iPhone users who had explicitly turned off location services left it open to a lawsuit or negotiated settlement by the agency,” Joseph Menn reports for The Financial Times.
“Experts testifying at a Senate hearing on Tuesday said that Apple had gathered the information after telling customers they could disable the services,” Menn reports. “Jessica Rich, deputy director of the FTC consumer-protection bureau, said she would not comment on a specific company but said that the regulator had taken action against other technology groups over statements they had made on their privacy policies.”
“‘If a statement is made by a company that is false, it is a deceptive practice’ and subject to enforcement action, she said. Ms Rich noted that deceptive statements were one of the few avenues for redress in privacy matters and that the FTC had used ‘misstatements’ recently to press Google and Twitter to accept privacy audits for the next 20 years,” Menn reports. “‘People have a right to know who is getting their information,’ said Democratic senator Al Franken, who chairs the new committee panel on privacy and technology. ‘We need to address this problem now.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
