Is Apple tracking you?

That's the question the company is trying to answer "No" today, with a FAQ presented in its entirety below. With top-10 lists all the rage, Apple presents 10 questions and answers about reported iPhone tracking. Is Apple watching you? Do you even care?

The controversy started last week, when researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden uncovered a so-called hidden data file with tracking information on iPhone. The discovery set off a row of controversy about Android and Windows Phone possibly tracking users, too. I know that Nexus S tracks, at least by default. Within a day of activating the device last December, I received email warning: "Google Latitude is running on your mobile device and reporting your location." Gee, thanks, Google.

Reports about location tracking prompted the House Energy and Commerce Committee to send out letters to Apple and other device manufacturers. The senate has scheduled a tracking privacy hearing for May 10.

Apple takes until #8 to get to the point -- that's seven Q&As of justification before it: "The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly." Cough, cough. A bug? That's a lame excuse, which is unnecessary in context of the more reasonable points Apple makes. But, hey, there's a class-action lawsuit now, so Apple has got to cover its butt, I guess.

This whole tracking thing stinks of media hype gone out of control. D`oh, of course Apple is tracking you, as does just about any other connected device or service. There's nothing new about this. For example, mobile phones can be tracked by cell-tower triangulation -- one byproduct of keeping a constant network connection.

Pretty much any GPS device can locate you. Should anyone be surprised that his or her GPS-enabled and cell-tower coordinating cell phone can do the same?

In a bit of a rant, Apple fanboy and journalist Daniel Eran Dilger puts perspective on so-called LocationGate in a blog post two days ago:

A dedicated GPS device can take a minute or more to calculate your location, but smartphone users demand a fast answer, whether they are looking up a location-based search of nearby restaurants, or simply tagging the photos they snap with automatic geolocation metadata that might be useful in reconstructing events after the fact when organizing an album. To perform fast lookups, a smartphone has to remember landmarks, relying upon mobile phone radio towers or nearby WiFi hotspots, the only objects it can really see around itself.

Apple makes a similar, and very reasonable argument in its FAQ. You can't get the benefits of location-based services without there being some location tracking.

Then there are the people who want to be tracked, using services like Facebook Places or foursquare -- even Twitter. The difference, of course, is that people opt-in to revealing their location.

I'm not sweating about Apple tracking me so that I can get better information or services faster in context of where I am. I'm more concerned that the bug fix will fix it so location services won't be as good or as fast. Besides, I figure that the Internet took away my privacy years ago, and if I had any left Sony let hackers snatch it in this month's massive PlayStation Network data breach.

Here's the Apple FAQ:

1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone? Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this? Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.

3. Why is my iPhone logging my location? The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it's maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone's location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone? The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone's location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update section below).

5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data? No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.

6. People have identified up to a year's worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today? This data is not the iPhone's location data??"it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don't think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple's crowd-sourced database? It shouldn't. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data? Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third parties? We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).

10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important? Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

Do you care that Apple or other connected-device/service providers might be tracking you? Please answer in comments. Before answering, please read Alex Levinson's excellent primer on mobile tracking. He is senior engineer for Katana Forensics.