Apple recently mentioned that any application that wants to access user contact data will need explicit user approval, just to avoid any potential (and perhaps even expensive) pitfalls down the road. It seems that social network service Path as well as other developers of different iOS applications stash away users’ address books on remote servers without obtaining users’ explicit permission beforehand. These address books are treasure troves of information, where they hold important details such as full names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.
Apple issued a statement yesterday, saying, “Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.” Now that is a good boy, Apple. If only you would let us know when the future release would be able to fix this issue. At least Google’s Android operating system’s apps do not take such an underhanded route and requests permission from the users beforehand.
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