Researcher: Apple iPhone location tracking has been no secret | Phones | iOS Central | Macworld: Levinson seems to define “intentional data collection” as “Apple pulls this information from your personal device over a network connection into its own servers.” He says there’s no evidence this is happening. Allan and Wardman say the same thing: no evidence.
Levinson expands on why this data is being collected at all. “Built-In applications such as Maps and Camera use this geolocational data to operate,” he writes. “Apple provides an API for access to location awareness called Core Location.” He quotes from Apple’s description of this software library: “... You use the classes and protocols in this framework to configure and schedule the delivery of location and heading events. You can also use it to define geographic regions and monitor when the user crosses the boundaries of those regions.”