The lawsuit follows a prediction made last week by Jim Harvey, a partner with the law firm of Alston & Bird and an expert in privacy law, that Apple would likely face legal challenges. "I wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to sue Apple over this," Harvey said on Thursday in an interview.

Vikram Ajjampur of Florida and William Devito of New York filed their lawsuit last Friday in a Florida federal court, accusing Apple of fraud, deceptive business practices and several additional violations of federal and state laws. Ajjampur and Devito have asked a federal judge to grant the case class-action status.

Their lawsuit came just two days after British researchers reported that iPhones and 3G iPads running iOS 4 . Those locations are stored in an unencrypted file on the mobile devices, as well as on owners' personal computers.

"Plaintiffs and proposed Class members were harmed by Apple's accrual of personal location, movement and travel histories because their personal computers were used in ways they did not approve, and because they were personally tracked just as if by a tracking device for which a court-ordered warrant would ordinarily be required," the lawsuit claimed.

According to the , an iPhone monitors and records the device's location even when location tracking services are turned off, a point that Ajjampur and Devito noted in their complaint.