"If you want to have fast and accurate positioning, you have to provide them with your anonymous tracking data."
No I don't have to.
I am currently working on an offline positioning system based on a (hopefully complete) dataset of all GSM-Cells in the world (http://myapp.fr/cellsIdData/). The sqlite3-database is currently 25MB big with some room for optimization. I do this for Android but the iPhone also has enough space to hold this data. Although I think it would be impossible with iOS because of missing APIs to be notified when the cell tower changes.
I'm sure that cell towers are enough for Assisted GPS to get a quick fix.
If people would have found a data set of all cell towers ids and coordinates no one would have had concerns about privacy.
Tracking data is only anonymous if it cannot be de-anonymized. Since I cannot check that this is not the case (with Apple, Google and Skyhook) I have doubts about the so called anonymity.
edit:
I am looking for a comprehensive dataset of wifi access points MAC-adresses and coordinates
I should've been clearer: I didn't mean "have to" in the sense of "strictly technically necessary" but more along the lines of "if you want to use this functionality, you'll have to help us out by collecting the data that'll make it work better for everyone".
Whether or not the collected data really makes the positioning that much better, I don't know, but Apple apparently seems to think it does.
No I don't have to.
I am currently working on an offline positioning system based on a (hopefully complete) dataset of all GSM-Cells in the world (http://myapp.fr/cellsIdData/). The sqlite3-database is currently 25MB big with some room for optimization. I do this for Android but the iPhone also has enough space to hold this data. Although I think it would be impossible with iOS because of missing APIs to be notified when the cell tower changes.
I'm sure that cell towers are enough for Assisted GPS to get a quick fix.
If people would have found a data set of all cell towers ids and coordinates no one would have had concerns about privacy.
Tracking data is only anonymous if it cannot be de-anonymized. Since I cannot check that this is not the case (with Apple, Google and Skyhook) I have doubts about the so called anonymity.
edit:
I am looking for a comprehensive dataset of wifi access points MAC-adresses and coordinates