Path Uploads Your Entire iPhone Address Book to Its Servers

Arun Thampi, after examining the network traffic between Path’s iPhone app and their servers:

Upon inspecting closer, I noticed that my entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path. Now I don’t remember having given permission to Path to access my address book and send its contents to its servers, so I created a completely new “Path” and repeated the experiment and I got the same result — my address book was in Path’s hands.

Path’s reaction, paraphrased: Hey, no big deal. We’re only using the data to help you find your friends.

Everyone else in the world’s reaction: Dude, that’s fucked up.

★ Wednesday, 8 February 2012