South Korea, Europe start iPhone location tracking investigations

I don't know about Europe, but walking around South Korea three years ago, it was a sea of Samsungs and LGs on every man, woman, child, and senior. Today, if a university student isn't sporting an iPhone 4 (not 3Gs, since that's last year's model), then it's because they're getting one next month or next semester.

Nevertheless, South Koreans are fiercely loyal to national brands and companies (chaebol - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol), so it sets up quite a quandary:

Do I get a better (often cheaper) smart phone that carries more cachet, or do I get a pretty-good locally-made phone that's loaded down with features that I don't really use much and for which I have to pay extra (Nate/June/DMBtv)?

It seems that almost universally Koreans have put aside their intense nationalism and national-brand loyalty (you'd be amazed how intense) and opted for the foreign-made cachet-carrier. That, with the exception of the Galaxy S, which is doing great and being promoted heavily on (literally) every busy street corner. I do mean literally, not "literally".

All of this to conclude that now, South Korea sees a huge chink in iPhone's armour, just like Naver and Daum saw a chink in Google's armor a couple of weeks ago. This is a chance to put down the foreigner brands and promote national brands anew. The thinking being: "let's go for it and see what we can get out of this."

Companies like Google and Apple have been eager to collect data on the GPS locations of cell towers, wifi access points and other network locations. In fact, there are entire companies (Skyhook http://skyhook.com) that drive cars around major cities mapping these things.

Why? So that their mobile applications can provide you location even if you don't have GPS. GPS doesn't work inside, GPS doesn't always work in big cities with a ton of buildings. Providing you location without requiring GPS is big money.

Unfortunately the cheapest way to gather this data is through crowd-sourcing. By having every iPhone record this data they could, in theory, help provide you location when GPS isn't available.

I don't know if that's why Apple is doing this now but I hope someone finds out. I'm all for location based services but using people without their knowledge seems like a bad way to go about it.

Apple: We 'must have' user location data. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/137432/20110423/apple-we-mus...

This feels like one giant leap towards big brother watching you. I personally decided against purchasing Apple products because of this. I'm glad to see countries are investigating this clear invasion of privacy.