By Yoon Ja-young
Apple received a 3 million won fine for collecting location information of iPhone users here. It is the first time for Apple to be penalized from governments around the world for the location data scandal that rattled those with smartphones.
The Korea Communications Commission announced Wednesday that it levied a 3 million won fine on Apple for gathering location information of users who opted not to offer it. It also said that Google, along with Apple, violated the law by not protecting the location information stored in smartphones.
“There were news reports in April that Apple is secretly collecting location data of iPhone users. We thus set on investigation over Apple Korea and Google Korea on whether they violated the relevant regulations,” said Seok Je-bum, head of the network policy bureau at the commission.
The regulator had Apple Korea and Google Korea hand in explanation on the matter, and sent officials to check the systems at their headquarters in the United States as well.
According to the commission, Apple had been storing location information as cache and sent it to the main server, even when the user turned off the location service, for around 10 months due to bug. The cache is a kind of information temporarily stored in a smartphone so that the phone could quickly pinpoint where it is located.
The relevant law requires the businesses to get consent from the user when collecting or taking advantage of location data. “Turning off the location service means the user withdrew the agreement. It violated the law as it collected and stored information without an agreement,” he explained. The commission levied the fine on Apple for the violation.
He admitted that the punishment is too small. “We plan to raise the fine by revising the law later as there was consensus in the commission that the current law is too lenient,” Seok said, adding that there were no smartphones when the law was drawn up.
On top of that, the commission found that Apple and Google stored the location information in the user’s handset without encrypting it. The law, meanwhile, demands that businesses should take technological protection measures on location information so that it won’t be leaked. Both Apple and Google, however, didn’t take proper measures such as encrypting the information or setting firewalls.
“We required that they should correct this,” Seok said. According to the law, the commission can suspend the business of those violating the law, but it is determined to just demand them to strengthen protection as halting their business would cause a great inconvenience to users.
The commission added that what Apple and Google have been collecting is not “personal” location information that can identify the individuals.
“We visited the headquarters of the two companies, and both of them were storing data at the server in the form where they can’t identify individual users. The information they collected is not personal location information,” Seok said.
“Apple is not tracking the location of your iphone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so,” a spokesperson for Apple Korea said.