• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, April 22, 2011 11:35 AM

Earlier this week, two security researchers revealed that Apple stores released iPhone and iPad users' long-term geographic histories. Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that both Apple devices and those running on Google's Android mobile operating system regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively.

"Google and Apple are gathering location information as part of their race to build massive databases capable of pinpointing people's locations via their cellphones," WSJ writes. At stake is the $2.9 billion market for location-based services, which Gartner expects to rise to $8.3 billion by 2014.

In the case of Google, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, an HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby Wi-Fi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier. So far, Google is not commenting on the new finding.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »