Amidst all the worldwide panicking about companies (namely Google and Apple) tracking their smartphone users’ locations, Windows Phone’s head has announced that the tracking features built into Windows Phone 7 are strictly for “landmarks not users”. In other words, it’s collecting the location of phone masts and WiFi points but not storing them in large amounts of cache on your device, like competing operating systems. Microsoft also plans to get rid of some of the tracking in the next release of WP7; it seems as if the world has reached levels of downright ridiculous behaviour unparalleled levels of paranoia about location tracking, so it’s nice to see Microsoft recognising the issue that people take, and keeping everyone happy.
Your Windows Phone isn’t tracking you. Well, not really.
May 14, 2011