Compass / Geolocation issue on iOS 6 (iPhone)

Applications targeted for iPhone (iOS 4.3+) using Cordova 2.1 and developed in XCode 4.5 automatically turn on Compass / Geolocation. This is true only for devices that have iOS 6 installed. User is never asked if they want to reveal their location to the app, so it's probably the Compass plugin kicking in.

What we see is the compass arrow on the right-hand top side of iPhone screen (status bar). When the application closes, arrow disappears.

This is an issue for us, as it drains considerably more battery than version running on iOS 5.1, where this problem does not exist.

We have tried to remove all - Location, Compass and GeoLocation plugins from the Cordova.plist to no avail.