The report says apple's iPhone 11 Pro will continue to collect location data unless the service is shut down completely

Apple's iPhone 11 Pro will continue to collect and transmit location data even if users disable all app location services, which could pose a potential security risk, according to a new report released on Tuesday, AppleInsider reported.

Brian Krebs, a security reporter, said the iPhone 11 Pro appeared to be ping its GPS module regularly to collect location data. Krebs demonstrated on the latest iPhone 11 Pro running iOS 13.2.3, and the system continued to collect GPS data for certain apps and system services, even though he manually disabled a single location service in iPhone Settings. Interestingly, the iPhone 11 Pro searches for GPS data even when the app's "location services" switch is set to "never" to request this information.
According to apple's privacy policy, the phone "will send a geo-tagged location to apple on a regular basis, anonymously and encrypted, to nearby wi-fi hotspots and cellular towers (where the device is supported), which will be used to augment the database of the location of the crowdsourced wi-fi hotspots and cell towers." Apple says it can disable location-based system services separately in Settings, but Krebs found that the iPhone or iOS excluded certain exceptions.
"But obviously, there are some system services on the iPhone 11 Pro that require location data, and if you don't turn it off completely, you can't disable it, because the arrow icon (iOS location service indicator) will still appear regularly, even after you disable all system services that use location information individually," Krebs explains.
In iOS, users can enable and disable system location services through the user interface provided in "privacy" > "location services" in "Settings". The setup is very elaborate, controlling first and third party apps, basic iOS services, and other Apple features. These tools have been enhanced in iOS 13 to greatly increase user control over data sharing and reduce the likelihood of accidental location tracking.
Previously, third-party applications could request persistent device location data during initial setup, but iOS 13 removed that feature. In addition, after manually enabling alway tracking in the Settings menu, a pop-up window appears periodically to remind the user of the setting and provide the option to turn it off.
But apple doesn't impose the same restrictions on its own apps, but informs iPhone users of its location-based service practices in its software user agreement. Krebs couldn't replicate the problem with the iPhone 8, and it's unclear if apple's iPhone 11 has similar problems.
"We don't see any real security concerns," the apple engineer said. "When the location service is enabled, the status service icon will appear in the status bar, which is the expected behavior. For system services that do not have a toggle switch in the Settings, the icon will appear."
Krebs thinks the strange problem may have something to do with the new iPhone hardware being introduced to support wi-fi 6, but that theory hasn't been proven.
For now, the only way to avoid intermittent GPS pings on the iPhone 11 Pro is to disable location services in Settings entirely. But doing so would disable many iPhone features.