San Francisco, Feb 13 (IANS): Tech giant Apple has rubbished the allegation of evading the users' privacy controls, and said that it has fixed a potential privacy vulnerability with iOS 16.3 and other updates.

Earlier this month, a report had mentioned that Apple Maps contained a security flaw that might have enabled an app to circumvent a user's privacy settings, reports AppleInsider.

However, now, the iPhone maker has claimed no apps took advantage of the flaw.

"Last week, we issued an advisory for a privacy vulnerability that could only be exploited from unsandboxed apps on macOS. The codebase that we fixed is shared by iOS and iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS, so the fix and advisory was propagated to those operating systems as well, despite the fact that they were never at risk," Apple was quoted as saying.

"A report also incorrectly suggested an iOS app was exploiting this or another vulnerability to bypass user control over location data," it added.

The company further mentioned that it investigated the allegation which concluded that the "app was not circumventing user controls through any mechanism."