Yep. Apple decided that it would be a great idea to constantly have their iPhone 4 send information that should generally remain private to both AT&T and themselves. In my opinion, this makes it crap, though I’m sure a lot of the Apple fans won’t really care. Here’s some informaton on them FORCING updates on your phone…Not that everything in quotes was said by an employee of Apple:

“How it works is every 7 to 14 days We (Apple) and AT&T send a message to your iPhone that gathers some data from your iPhone without you knowing and we see what is running, baseband and firmware. We then send a following message. “There are optional updates for your iPhone, Would you like to install them now?” two options “Yes” or “Later”. Those are what would would call “OPTIONAL UPDATES” Now there are things called “MANDATORY UPDATES”. They tend to work the same way, grab data from the iPhones sends it to AT&T and us then back to your iPhone with the message, “Your iPhone (name of iphone) must be updated to the current AT&T standards to run”, your only option is to “Accept” Now you can try to work your way around it until you get the second mandatory message again “You must plug iPhone into iTunes and update” If you don’t do this you will then receive no Signal from the network anymore and your iPhone will potentially lock up with no signs of use until you update your iPhone via iTunes. You all agreed to this terms and condition when you installed iTunes 9.2 and then again once you updated to iOS4. With that being Said go ahead Try to unlock the iPhone it will only last 14 days max…”

Not so bad in your opinion? Well, there’s another thing that they’re doing, which makes very little sense. In their FaceTime feature (it allows for wireless video chatting), the data is not secured so people can easily intercept your messages. Naturally, you can use secured wireless, but what if you’re using insecure wireless internet and don’t have the option to secure it? Ok, I guess it’s not THAT bad, right? Well, it gets worse. Whenever you do this feature, both Apple and AT&T are sent GPS coordinates that state where you are. Why? What is the purpose? There is no purpose. It is simply invasive for no reason, especially seeing as how WiFi is being used and NOT the carrier’s service. Here’s what an Apple employee had to say:

“I will let you off with one last bit of information if your gonna write a story on this and that is Facetime, the iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 Wifi video connecting. The issue is with Wifi is that anyone can get on a Wifi Signal and potentially see what the viewers and broadcasters are looking at without them know, now Apple will deny this and say its not our problem you where not on a secure connection, in my mind I think that its all bullshit.

People should be able to have some type of security during those calls. Worst yet is once a person connects to another person on FaceTime it for some reason non of us in the office can figure out, sends us APPLE a message and says those two people are connecting via Facetime and gives out their location to us. So for whatever reason we need that information just blows my mind. As a consumer why would you need to let Apple know that you are connecting with a person via FaceTime, its non of Apple’s business.”

Source: QuickPWN