Two US citizens have sued Apple Inc. in connection with secretly recording the whereabouts and movements of iPhone and iPad 3G owners, writes Wired.

In the class action lawsuit, filed in a Tampa Florida federal court, Vikram Ajjampur and William Devito have accused Apple of violating U.S. law and sued it for an undisclosed compensation. At the same time they are seeking that their claim be acknowledged as a collective one, and filed on behalf of all the iPhone and iPad 3G owners.

In particular, the plaintiffs claim that the Apple stored information about the location of device owners in an unencrypted form. According to them, users’ personal data could become an easy target for hackers and other intruders and could be used for criminal purposes.

On April 20, reports had surfaced about Apple’s iOS4 platform storing information about movement of Iphone and iPad 3G owners. It was revealed that such gadgets periodically record the location of users without their knowledge. These data get stored on the device in the system file called consolidated.db, which is automatically copied to your hard drive when you synchronize with your computer.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is on a sick leave presently, in a personal reply to one of the users through email wrote “We don’t track anyone on iPhone”.

Following the revelation about “tracking” of users, American human rights activists and members of Congress wrote an open letter to Apple asking it to explain the working principles of the service and the purpose behind its development.

Apple is yet to comment on the tracking issue or the Tampa lawsuit.