Apple and five other companies have been accused of allowing applications on the iPhone and iPad to transmit users' personal information to advertising networks without consent, in a legal complaint filed in the US.
The firm filing the complaint on behalf of two groups of Apple users says it could also be levelled against Google over its Android mobile operating system for the same reasons.
The complaint is seeking "class action" status. It was filed on 23 December in the US federal court in San Jose, California, according to Bloomberg.
The lawsuit notes that iPhones and iPads contain unique identifying elements – known as the Unique Device Identifier, or "UDID" – which let advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they're used and for how long. Users cannot block the transmission of the UDID, a 40-character string that uniquely identifies each device.
"Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users' location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views," the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Jonathan Lalo of Los Angeles County, alleges.
The issue of how much data about individual users is leaked to the creators of apps has become a hot topic in recent months following investigations which suggested that some gather more data than they strictly require to operate without notifying the user or providing any way to monitor what is sent.
Apple has come under the spotlight, but a number of applications for Google's Android have also been identified as potentially infringing on privacy.
Apple's iOS – for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – and Google's Android are used in millions of mobile devices around the world. Iin the third quarter of 2010, Apple had about 17% of the global smartphone market, and Android roughly 25%, according to the research group Gartner.
Lalo's suit identifies applications such as Pandora, Paper Toss, the Weather Channel and Dictionary.com, and names them as defendants along with Apple. Lalo is represented by Scott Kamber and Avi Kreitenberg of KamberLaw LLC in New York.
A similar suit filed by four people on the same day calls Apple's actions "an intrusive tracking scheme" and calls Apple's failure to keep the apps out of the store and realise that they breach privacy as "aiding and abetting" their privacy invasion.
Apple claims it reviews all applications on its App Store and doesn't allow them to transmit user data without customer permission, according to Lalo's complaint. Apple's rules for applications says: "Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used."
The lawsuit claims that the transmission of personal information is a violation of federal computer fraud and privacy laws, and seeks class-action status for Apple customers who downloaded an application on their iPhone or iPad between 1 December 2008, and last week.
However, analysts were unfazed. Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told Reuters the lawsuits would have little impact on investors.
"If this were a major issue, all web browsers would have to shut down and there would not be any advertising on the internet," Chowdhry said.
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