Microsoft has come clean over the scale of a location data leak in its Windows Phone handsets.
The company is already facing a lawsuit over allegations that it tracks users via the camera application.
Now the company has admitted “unintended behaviour” does indeed send location information based on Wi-Fi hotspots back to Microsoft while using the camera and voice-recognition application, even if geo-location photo tagging has been turned off.
“We have identified an unintended behaviour in the Windows Phone 7 software that results in information about nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers being periodically sent to Microsoft when using the camera, and, for phones that are configured for US-English, when using the phone's voice command features,” the company admitted in an update to it privacy policy.
“For the camera, the software bug results in the behaviour even where you have disabled geo-tagging photos in the camera application.”
The particular flaw is fixed by the 7.5 version update, but Microsoft admitted it had discovered another location tracking “unintended behaviour” within the Me software feature in the Mango update.
“Each time you access the 'Me' feature, information about nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers is sent to the Windows Phone location service,” Microsoft said.
“The information sent, received and stored by the Windows Phone location service when you use the 'Me' feature does not identify you or your individual device. Nevertheless, this behaviour is unintended and will be eliminated as part of the next scheduled update to Windows Phone 7.5.”
The company said concerned users could block their phone sending data now by disabling access to all location information services via Settings.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
