A consumer lawsuit against Apple over data privacy issue has been dismissed by a California federal judge on Monday as the judge found the plaintiffs failed to show they actually relied on any alleged company misrepresentations and that they had been harmed by doing so.
The set of claims made against Apple by the four plaintiffs in 2011 included charges of violating user’s privacy policy claiming that iOS has been designed in a way that it easily transmits personal information to third parties that collect and analyze such data without user’s consent or detection.
The second claim covers location-tracking issue. According to Apple’s 2011 software license agreements, no location information would be collected and sent to Apple servers if users turn off the Location Services option in the Settings app, but the company’s iPhone with iOS 4.1 did in fact build a database of Wi-Fi network and cell tower locations on the device and sent it to Apple even when users deactivated the Location Services option.
The court documents revealed that the plaintiffs also claimed they suffered damages by paying too much money for their iPhones and by losing storage space, among other things.
Judge Lucy H. Koh, in a November 25 ruling, said: “Plaintiffs must be able to provide some evidence that they saw one or more of Apple’s alleged misrepresentations, that they actually relied on those misrepresentations, and that they were harmed thereby” reported Reuters.
Due to lack of evidence presented by the plaintiffs Koh dismissed the case on Monday stating: “As Plaintiffs have failed to show that there is a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether any Plaintiff actually relied on any of Apple’s alleged misrepresentations,” and thus “the Court concludes that no plaintiff has standing to pursue either the iDevice or geolocation claims.”
Plaintiff’s lawyer and Apple both declined to comment anything on the matter.
