7 Popular iPhone Apps That Snoop Into Your Address Book
by Steve Kovach on Feb 20, 2012, 2:25 PM
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 Path caused quite the uproar when a developer discovered its app accesses your iPhone's address book and stores that information on its servers. Even though Path is taking most of the heat for the controversy, it's not the only app that scans your iPhone's address book. Right now, Apple makes it pretty easy for app developers to gain access to your contacts' information. Luckily, the company just announced that it will soon require app developers to ask your permission before accessing your address book. That's good news. In the meantime, we rounded up some of the more popular iPhone apps that do look at your address book. Keep in mind that it's highly unlikely these apps are storing your company for nefarious purposes. In most cases, apps, especially social networking apps, use your contacts' info so they can let you know if a new friend joins that network. Path now asks permission before looking at your address book  This whole controversy started with Path, which is getting a lot of the blame for storing your address book's information on its servers. Path looks at your address book so it can recommend following people you already know using the social network. After the massive backlash, Path quickly issued an update to its app that explicitly asks for your permission before it scans your address book.
Facebook will store your address book data to help you find new friends  Facebook has an optional feature that scans your iPhone's address book to help you find new friends. Facebook does ask for permission before doing so. According to the app, Facebook will "store imported contacts on your behalf and may use them to generate friend suggestions for you and others."
Foursquare looks at your contacts, but doesn't store them  Before the controversy with Path began, Foursquare would scan your address book without permission. However, we reached out to Foursquare and the company says it never stored users' address book info on its servers. Foursquare recently added an update to its app that asks permission before uploading your address book.
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