Which is literally when they began to take privacy very seriously. Keep in mind that's 8 years ago & the first iPhone was released 12 years ago. I wouldn't characterize that as "recent".

You say “caught red handed” and other accusatory statements. The article says they had announced how (encrypted, anonymised) and why (to provide more accurate location information to users) before it was “discovered”.

It doesn’t really appear to be very nefarious, nor an advertising issue. Maybe an unintentional or neglectful privacy issue at worst, in the case of an already-stolen phone.