Some Mobile Apps are Gathering Data From Your Address Book

Last week, a social networking app called Path came under scrutiny after a programmer discovered a major issue. When you logged into the app on an Apple iOS device — an iPhone or iPad — it automatically uploaded your entire address book to its servers without asking first. Apparently this was done so you could locate your friends who were also using the service. But if you’re never prompted (which is what most apps do) this functionality has the makings for one big privacy dispute. An excerpt from a New York Times article below highlights the concerns many have over this revelation: The address book in smartphones — where some of the user’s...