As expected from last week’s press release from Apple, the company has begun to roll out the promised iOS updates designed to address issues stemming from the LocationGate logging scandal that caused a media frenzy and subsequently made people more aware of how far location-based services on smartphones can go before becoming legal, ethical and civil issues.
The iOS 4.3.3 update reduces the amount of the cached location information from the previous perpetual logging by size limit to 7 days of data. It also no longer backs up the cache to Mac or PC via iTunes upon syncing and the cache is now deleted from the device when Location Services are disabled in the Settings app. Apple has also announced plans to encrypt the location information on iOS devices itself in the next major update to the operating system as a further security measure.
The iOS 4.3.3 update is available for the GSM iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, third-generation iPod touch, and the fourth-generation iPod touch. The latest devices to be excluded from the update are the iPhone 3G and the second-generation iPod touch which were supported by the original release of iOS 4. The CDMA iPhone has also been updated today to iOS 4.2.8 which addresses the aforementioned location logging issues and continues on its own update path from the GSM version.
