“Path” app uploads your contacts list to it’s servers

An iOS developer in Singapore, Arun Thampi, has noticed that the “Path” app, which is a little like instagram, sends peoples contacts details back to the companies servers. Arun posted about it today after he noticed various API calls made to Path’s servers from the iPhone app which included all his contacts on his iPhone. The story quickly spread and resulted in Path’s CEO replying to Arun’s post saying:

Arun, thanks for pointing this out. We actually think this is an important conversation and take this very seriously. We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and effeciently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.

We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval.

Not exactly reassuring in my mind. How many of us just click “accept” on those annoying T&C’s we never have time to read. Should we be spending some of our valuable time reading them before we install these apps. The T&C’s can be long but our privacy (and especially that of our friends and family)  is too important to give these apps control of our lives which seem to take what they want from us. Do you use the app? If so let us know what you think about it or apps like it in general in the comments section below.