Topic: All your iPhone contacts are belong to us

[scottws]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/ios-apps-massive-invasion-of-user-privacy/15138

Apparently it is extremely easy for iOS developers to access user contacts on iOS devices.  Well apparently most of those developers are taking advantage of that and uploading and storing for themselves the entire address book on the iOS device on which their app is installed.

For what it is worth, Android apps can access your contacts as well, but it is a special permission and it tells you it is going to do it when you install such an app.  There is no such facility on iOS.

[idolminds]

Wow, that is really shitty. Hopefully Apple puts a stop to that.

[Quemaqua]

Thankfully my iPod contact list consists of exactly 0 people. But yeah, that's pretty shitty.

[idolminds]

Yeah I dont have much of anything in my contact list (most of them dont even have phone numbers), but even if you don't have anyone on YOUR iOS device one of your friends might have you on theirs. So either way they know your shit. Thats the bad part about it. They are gathering information about people that have zero contact with.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, I mean it's bad all around, don't get me wrong. Just glad that I don't have an iPhone or whatever, which would have everyone I know and all their phone numbers.

[Cools!]

So much for Apple's stringent app review process...