Apple solves location privacy issue with iPhone 11 in 2nd iOS 13.3.1 beta

San Francisco, Jan 18 (IANS) The second beta version of Apple’s iOS 13.3.1, released earlier this month, now includes a toggle for disabling the Ultra Wideband chip in the device. This comes after privacy issue reports around the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro that they still tracked location data even when users had turned off location services.

When that led to more questions and debates, the iPhone maker stated the behaviour was due to the fact the UWB chip in the new iPhones isn’t approved broadly around the world, so the iPhone 11 uses location services to check if UWB can be used or not, 9to5Mac reported on Friday.

“We do not see any actual security implications,” an Apple engineer was earlier quoted as saying by KrebsOnSecurity.

“It is expected behaviour that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings.”

After giving an unsatisfactory answer, Apple had said in December that it would bring a dedicated toggle in location services to allow customers to completely turn off the feature.