Path, Not Pathological...well maybe a little pathological
Was waiting to see what MG Siegler had to say about this Path privacy issue that came up. While he makes a couple good points in his post, I do take exception to this point:
But if we’re going to freak out about this situation, it’s naive to freak out about it over one app. Again, this is happening all across the iOS ecosystem. And no one has said a thing. For years.
That’s just untrue. Every now and then some issue like this comes up and everyone gets upset at the developer. The first time I can recall this happening is Aurora Feint, an app that debuted in 2008 and ran into some privacy concerns doing something pretty similar.
While I understand why Mr. Siegler would want to defend Path, I don’t get why he’s pushing the persecution angle. “Yes we did it but why are you only yelling at us for it?” is not a defense.
I’m glad that Path has fixed this, and they deserve credit for being communicative on the issue and releasing a fix for it so promptly. But really, this never should have happened in the first place. It’s so laughably easy to accomplish the same purpose (locating friends) without violating privacy that it beggars belief that they actually decided it would be a good idea to upload everyone’s address books.
