Apple has denied Chinese claims that iOS 7 can pose a serious risk to mobile security. The China Central Television (CCT) made a national broadcast on Friday that warned people that the iPhone could threaten national security because it can track and time-stamp a user’s location.
The state-run CCTV also went on to say that government secrets and other pieces of sensitive data could be stolen via iOS 7. Apple has denied all of China’s claims.
“As we have stated before, Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services,” it said.
“We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It’s something we feel very strongly about.”
Apple went on to say that their GPS geolocation services are meant to help users find nearby restaurants or malls – not to perform any malicious tasks. Not only that, but iPhone users can also disable the GPS geolocation services if they choose to.
According to Apple’s website, its Frequent Location feature is described like this: “Your iPhone will keep track of places you have recently been, as well as how often and when you visited them, in order to learn places that are significant to you. This data is kept solely on your device and won’t be sent to Apple without your consent. It will be used to provide you with personalized services, such as predictive traffic routing.”
Apple also noted that Frequent Location data is only stored on a person’s iPhone, and is not backed up on iCloud or iTunes. On top of that, the data is encrypted, which would make it very hard for someone to hack into it.
China’s claims are thought to be a retaliation against the US after American officials said that Chinese hackers broke into US computer networks that hold information on federal employees. It has not yet been confirmed if that is why CCTV reported on the matter.
The full statement from Apple about the CCTV claims can be found here.
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