"We appreciate CCTV's effort to help educate customers on a topic we think is very important," Apple said on Saturday in a statement in Chinese and in English on its China website. "We want to make sure all of our customers in China are clear about what we do and we don't do when it comes to privacy and your personal data", Reports AFP (Agence France-Presse).

Ma Ding, director of the Institute for Security of the Internet at People's Public Security University in Beijing, told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Friday that the frequent locations function could be used to gather "extremely sensitive data," and even state secrets.

But Apple strongly denied the claim. "As we have stated before, Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services," it said.

"We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It's something we feel very strongly about."

CCTV is an influential news channel in China.

According to Apple GPS services for practical purposes, such as helping a user find the closest restaurant, check the weather forecast or calculate travel time to work. “It’s important to point out that during this collection process, an Apple device does not transmit any data that is uniquely associated with the device or the customer. Customers have to make the choice to enable Location Services; it is not a default setting. Apple does not allow any app to receive device location information without first receiving the user’s explicit consent through a simple pop-up alert,” says Apple, therefore denying the claims made by Chinese news channel CCTV.