[lilyball]

> My guess to why Google/Apple didn't introduce rough location (like US state or county) into the system was to prevent journalists from jumping onto that detail and sensationalizing it into something it isn't (Google/Apple grabbing your data). Both companies operate the most popular maps apps on the planet as well as OS level location services that phone home constantly so they are already in possession of that data.

Apple is not in possession of the location of your phone. Their mapping system is designed to keep all queries to the servers anonymous using random rotated identifiers, even going so far as to keep the server from being able to see the full route from start to end (IIRC it's broken up into at least two chunks that are requested separately, though I don't know the details).

[est31]

Do you mean this?

> To protect user privacy, this data is associated with an identifier that rotates at the conclusion of a trip, not with the user’s Apple ID or any other account information. Rotating the ID at the conclusion of the trip makes it harder for Apple to piece together a history of any user’s activity over time.

https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_P...

I think it's a nice gesture, however I wouldn't say that Apple isn't in possession of that data. The phone already uses other Apple services that are linked to your Apple ID and those services tell your IP address to Apple. Even if Apple can't track you via the rotating ID (not sure how it's made, maybe they actually can't), your IP address will reveal you, at least as long as you are using ipv6 which Apple has been heavily pushing in the past years.

They might not have the data refined, but even the whitepaper says it only makes piecing together the location history harder, not impossible.

[lilyball]

What you quoted is specifically about traffic collection. I don't know where to find a definitive source on this now, but Apple used to have a marketing page that said

> When you use Apple Maps, your route from A to B is fragmented into scrambled sections on Apple servers because nobody else should know your entire route. Not even us. In fact, we don’t even know who requests a route.

My recollection was that the device itself sends multiple requests in chunks to get the route, but I don't know if this is accurate or if it's just fragmented on the server prior to any data retention.

In any case, the point is that Apple very intentionally discards data that can be used to track you, and anonymizes what they do retain. While yes, it's very likely that Apple could figure out where you are if your device is set to use Apple services and they wanted this info, they've set up their services to make it as difficult as possible for them to figure this out.