Bo-eun leads the digital content team. She has covered foreign affairs, North Korea, tech, economy and gender issues at The Korea Times. She did a short stint at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where she obtained a new perspective on news production and life. Small sources of joy for her are lounging in the sun, having a good latte and swimming.
iPhone users drop suit against Apple
By Kim Bo-eun
The nation’s first class action lawsuit filed against U.S. electronics maker Apple concerning the location tracking function of its iPhone has been dropped, a court said Friday.
The plaintiffs claimed the technology violated their privacy, but they dropped the case due to difficulty in gathering evidence to support this, according to the Seoul Central District Court.
Apple had countered these claims, saying it had not tracked the locations of users but used the information to maintain a database of Wi-Fi zones in their vicinity.
A total of 29 South Korean consumers filed the suit for 23.2 million won ($21,973) against Apple headquarters in California and Apple Korea in April 2011. However, they dropped their suit on Jan 8.
“The specific evidence is in the hands of the defendants, so we could not get hold of it,” said a lawyer for the consumers. “We will seek other methods on how to deal with the situation.”
Kang and the others cited the withdrawal was due to the difficulty in getting hold of evidence which could verify their claims that the location tracking function on the iPhone was indeed infringing on their right to privacy.
It seems also that they had in mind the adverse effects of a possible ruling against the plaintiffs could have on a larger scale trial that is underway at another local court.
Miraelaw, a law firm based in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, lodged a class action suit with the Changwon District Court against both Apple Korea and Apple headquarters in August 2011 on behalf of some 28,000 iPhone users, demanding the firm pay each of them 1 million ($947) won in compensation for violating their rights to privacy.
The move came after the Changwon District Court ruled in July 2011 that Apple should pay 1 million won for privacy infringement caused by the location-tracking function to a lawyer with Miraelaw, who was one of the iPhone users. This was the first local case where an iPhone user was awarded compensation for Apple’s location data collection.
Kang and the others had filed the class action suit when they discovered that information of the location of iPhone users was automatically saved on a hidden file titled “consolidated.db.”
They had filed for 800,000 won ($757) in compensation for each person, claiming that Apple did not disclose the purposes the location information was used for and that it did not take measures to protect personal information from being leaked.