Last week, a suit was filed against Microsoft (News - Alert) claiming that the software behemoth was collecting location data of its Windows 7 mobile OS users without the users knowing.

It was security experts who uncovered the allegation, saying that cameras were capturing the data anytime a photo was snapped and that the data were sent to Microsoft without the knowledge of the operator.

But Microsoft is saying nay-nay, that is not the case. In fact, Microsoft has said any location data cannot be correlated with a specific user, which would ensure users’ privacy, so no harm, no foul.

Said data, says Microsoft, are only collected if the user allows it, but the heart of the issue is that, according to the lawsuit, the camera still tracks location and sends it to Microsoft even if the user has said no.

The suit, filed on behalf of an unknown Windows 7 phone user, seeks “injunction and punitive damages, among other remedies,” according to Reuters.

The suit says:

“Users clicking ‘cancel’ explicitly deny Microsoft access to their geolocations. Unfortunately for its users, however, Microsoft brazenly continues to collect users’ location information, regardless of whether or not the individual chooses ‘cancel’ so as to not allow such information to be tracked. Thus, Microsoft surreptitiously forces even unwilling users into its non-stop geo-tracking program in the interest of developing its digital marketing grid.”

“Microsoft's representations to Congress were false,” the lawsuit contends.

It's not clear at this stage whether the data being collected includes more than just the basic latitude and longitude coordinates that are logged as standard by geolocation systems.

If all that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because Apple (News - Alert) found itself in Microsoft’s very same shoes a few months ago. Back then, Apple was found guilty of wrongly tracking the location of its iPhone (News - Alert) users with iOS, a “bug” that Apple fixed with a software update.

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