Apple took a lot of heat a few months ago when it was discovered it was recording the locations of its iPhone 4 and iPad products. Now it has to deal with something more tangible; a monetary fine. This week News.com reports that the government of South Korea has now fined Apple for its location storing activities. The amount of the fine is pretty small; just 3 million Korean won. That amounts to just $2,829 USD. Apple should consider itself lucky that South Korea was so lenient with its punishment. The story says that the country’s government could have suspended Apple’s operations in that country.
Apple has said that the location data was logged by its iPhones and iPads due to a bug in the iOS platform. The “bug” was discovered last April by British researchers and Apple released an iOS patch in May that fixed this issue.
It looks like one other country is looking into Apple’s actions The AFP news service (via Google) is also reporting that France’s government is investigating Apple’s location storage issues as well. The story quotes Yann Padova, the head of France’s technology consumer protection agency CNIL as saying, “We have sent two letters to Apple, who have responded to us in part. We received some clarifications, but they were not complete. The file is still under investigation. ”