A lawyer here announced Thursday that he will lead a class action against Apple Inc. for violation of privacy with its iPhone “tracker” device.

All eyes are now on whether Apple will aggressively defend against the litigation, which may affect the majority of the country’s 3 million iPhone users and inflict billions of won in losses on the business giant.

According to MiraeLaw law firm, one of its lawyers, Kim Hyeong-seok, launched the website www.sueapple.co.kr on Thursday and looked for people willing to join a fresh round of litigation against Apple to set an example of mobile privacy protection. The website was shut down due to heavy traffic.

Kim’s moves came a couple of weeks after he won a ruling from Changwon District Court last month ordering Apple to pay him 1 million won ($925) for lax management of its information gathered through the tracker service.

According to computer expert Alasdair Allan’s revelation earlier this year, the iPhone keeps track of where users go, saving every detail in a secret file on the device, which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronized. The data can be collected without users’ permission and is stored for up to a year, he claimed.

What the court found problematic was not the fact that Apple had a tracking program but the fact that the information was not encrypted well enough to prevent leakage and possible abuse by another person. The judge said Apple seemed to have won the rights to gather personal information from the user in advance but had not executed its obligation to manage it with care. This may pose a threat to one’s constitutional rights, the judge said.

Kim, who filed the suit in April, claimed that the idea of his personal information leaked to a third party for abuse inflicted distress and asked for compensation. Apple has reportedly sent a total of 998,000 won as of the end of June without appeal, with 2,000 won deducted for bank transaction fees.

The media have forecast that the small victory will cause a butterfly effect here and abroad, where many users are also seeking compensation from the mobile phone maker for the same reason.

Three million people here are iPhone users and when iPad users are taken into account, the number of possible plaintiffs would soar even higher, insiders say.

“The amount of compensation is not large but since an iPhone is less than 1 million won, it could impose a huge threat to Apple,” a pundit was quoted by saying to a local daily.

But some legal experts were skeptical about such a rosy picture for the consumers. They said that should Apple decide to build a strong defense to the class action suit, there would not be much for consumers to do.

“The plaintiffs must prove the presence of physical, emotional or other form of damage inflicted by the use of iPhone tracker program. It’s not going to be easy. The Changwon Court ruling was made with absolute silence from Apple,” a legal expert told a local daily.

The Korea Herald could not reach an Apple Korea spokesperson for comments on the litigation, but according to an official statement made by the headquarters in April, Apple denies the allegations.

“Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone,” spokesperson Natalie Harrison said. 

She said the tracking was to provide mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy.

The press release also noted, “The data is not the iPhone’s location data -- it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is because of a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly.”



By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)