Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — The nation’s four largest wireless carriers say they obtain customer permission before using a subscriber’s physical location to provide driving directions, family-finder applications and other location-based services, and before sharing a subscriber’s location with any outside mobile apps that provide such services.
But in letters to Congress released Thursday, the wireless companies also say they have no power to require device makers like Apple or independent developers of location-based apps to get similar user consent if these apps don’t rely on the carriers themselves to track a user’s whereabouts.
