Blog 5

The social media outlet Twitter, has recently admitted to taking the address books from its users phones and storing them in their data bases. A man in Singapore noticed that his contacts had been copied from his phone without him knowing or even being consent by a social network called Path. The ceo of the company has since apologized for the incident and has stated that it will now ask it's users if they would like to opt out of the feature. This problem is mainly seen in Apples Iphones. The problem is this violates the users guidelines. They also add that it can't transmit user data without having their consent first. Twitter has since said it will update its app and make the privacy policy more easy to understand for its users. They also will inform that users of the Twitter app will have their contacts scanned to see if any one in their contact list also uses twitter.  

The biggest issue with this is obviously invasion of personal privacy. Had the man in Singapore not noticed his contacts were copied then the privacy of million of twitter users would still be compromised. This is becoming a major problem with smart phones. Users getting their contacts stolen and then sold  to ad companies that in turn send spam to their email accounts. This in turn gets handed to more spam sites and then the user will have to create a newer more secure account. Once your contact information is sold it opens the doors to the same happening to everyone in your contact list. 

Social Apps Stealing Contacts