Some of you guys might recall that back in 2011, there was a huge issue over alleged location data tracking, and two huge companies were the target of a investigation – Apple and Google. Apple claims that they do not track their users’ whereabouts and has since taken steps to limit the information that iOS will be able to collect. However this did not stop a number of lawsuits from being filed, which has since been combined into a single lawsuit that Judge Lucy Koh has given the greenlight for and will be overseeing. The lawsuit also extends beyond mere location data collection, but will now encompass data collection such as addresses, gender, ages, app functions and device identifiers.
The judge has thrown out claims involving violation of privacy rights, computer fraud, wiretapping and records disclosure, and will instead make Apple answer to the claims pertaining to two California consumer protection laws. According to Judge Koh, the plaintiffs will be able to pursue claims that they overpaid for Apple devices based on the company’s statements about privacy protection, along with whatever additional bandwidth and storage consumption that might have been a result of the alleged data collection.
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