Apple has been secretly tracking user location and this has created quite a controversy over location privacy. Pete Warden, founder of Data Science Toolkit and a former Apple employee, and Alasdair Allan, senior research fellow at the University of Exeter say that Apple has been collecting this kind of data since iOS4.

Did you know that each iPhone or 3G iPad collects about 100 locations daily? And if this is not disconcerting enough, “if you lose your phone, then all your movements for the last year are on that phone, and can be taken off,” says Allan. Apple has even built an app that helps you take a look at your own data. You can find the app on the Internet at the O’Reilly Radar, along with a video interview with the researchers.

In its defense Apple released a statement saying the data file uncovered by researchers is not a log of a phone’s location, but “a list of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers nearby”. This apparently helps the device establish its location without having to listen for faint signals from GPS satellites. But this controversy over location privacy has  drawn the attention of the US Congress who has seized the opportunity to make sure federal privacy laws keep up with technology.

The issue of data privacy is not a new one. Security experts have been warning us about this for over a year. However, this new discovery raises questions about how much privacy you implicitly surrender by carrying around a Smartphone and, how much responsibility really lies with Smartphone producers in protecting the sensitive data that runs through their devices.

According to a CBS News report “researchers emphasize that there’s no evidence that Apple itself has access to this data. The data apparently stays on the device itself, and computers back the data up. Tracking is a normal part of owning a cell phone. What’s done with that data, though, is where the controversy lies.”

As the researchers themselves state, Apple doesn’t seem to be doing anything controversial with the data. However the fact remains: we are carrying around GPS, navigation and Internet able Smartphone’s. We are sharing our location through social sites like Foursquare, Gowalla and other location-based services without an understanding perhaps of the ramifications.

In my opinion Smartphone developers have a responsibility to educate consumers when it comes to privacy issues and consumers have a responsibility to protect themselves. But living in the Facebook Age where the social experience is built around sharing I am wondering how important privacy is to the next generation of consumers?

Sailing is a lot like business. You need a good boat (product), a strong breeze (opportunity), a strategy to win, and a “sober” captain and crew. Here are some sailing photos from EO Houston University taken with my EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) colleagues while sailing on Galveston Bay, Texas. There was an interesting strategy going on!