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Apple again sued over iPhone location data, personal information

 

Another lawsuit against Apple has emerged, alleging that the company commits fraud, abuse and unfair trade practices because it transmits the iPhone's Unique Device ID and location information to third-party advertisers.

Filed in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico by Lymaris M. Rivera Diaz, the new lawsuit accuses Apple of "intentionally intercepting personally identifying information," The Loop reports. The Weather Channel, Pandora Media and as many as 10 unnamed companies, provisioned as Does 1-10, are listed in the complaint.

According to the report, Apple faces six different charges, including fraud, abuse and unfair trade practices, for its alleged practice of capturing an iPhone's UDID and location data and sending the information to advertisers.

The filing comes on the heels of another lawsuit also targeting Apple and Pandora Media Group. Filed in New York, the lawsuit took issue with Apple's lack of a method to "delete or restrict access" to a device's UDID. The suit also alleges that the company collects data from users without their consent. As with a similar complaint from December 2010, the lawsuit appears to be based off of an article from The Wall Street Journal that highlighted the use of anonymous user tracking in mobile apps.

In April, a class-action suit was filed against Apple over an alleged "location tracking" file in the iPhone publicized by security researchers last month.

Apple has since revealed that the database in question is actually a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers. CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview that people "jumped to the wrong conclusions" about the file.

The company admitted that a bug in iOS preserved the data for longer than was necessary. Last week, Apple released iOS 4.3.3 to address the issue.

While testifying at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing earlier this week, Apple Vice President of Software Technology Guy L. "Bud" Tribble reaffirmed the company's commitment to privacy. "Apple is strongly committed to giving our customers clear and transparent notice, choice and control over their information, and we believe our products do so in a simple and elegant way," he said.

For several years now, Apple has been the world's most-sued tech company. As such, the company has brought on several prominent lawyers as outside counsel to protect itself.