Judge formally dismisses user privacy lawsuit regarding location services and App Store data collection policy

Reuters is reporting that Lucy Koh has today dismissed a data privacy lawsuit against Apple that dates back to 2011. The plaintiffs were suing on the basis that (in iOS 4.1) Apple collected WiFi hotspot and cell tower location data even though Location Services were disabled.

In addition, the lawyers claimed that the App Store was designed to easily transmit personal data to third parties without user consent. As a result, they alleged that they overpaid for their iPhones. They said that they would have paid significantly less for their devices if they had known Apple would continue to ‘track’ their location with location services disabled.

The judge tossed the case as the plaintiffs could not adequately show existence and evidence of harm.

“Plaintiffs must be able to provide some evidence that they saw one or more of Apple’s alleged misrepresentations, that they actually relied on those misrepresentations, and that they were harmed thereby,” Koh said in the November 25 ruling.

 At the time, Apple characterised the location tracking as an inadvertent bug and released a fix with iOS 4.3. With iOS 6, Apple also introduced new privacy controls to prevent apps from using data such as Contacts, Calendars and Reminders without user approval.

The full court document about the dismissal can be found on Scribd.