6 ms·

Hipster (like Path) uploads your address book emails to its servers

291 points by markchang 15y ago

artemvv 15y ago
Unbelievable.
zackzackzack 15y ago
Making a prediction: When you wake up tomorrow morning, the front page will be filled with stories like these about every type of app you can think of. It will only get worse from here.
- josephcooney 15y ago
  I have little doubt. My only question/interest is - what is the most high-profile and also the most odd-ball app/company that will be found to have done this.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- benologist 15y ago
  Worse is an interesting choice of words .... if a bunch of companies get shamed into respecting people's privacy then that's great, and if it gets the ball rolling and triggers the wrath of app stores ... that's even better.
  - mdonahoe 15y ago
    Worse meaning that these two apps are only the tip of the iceberg. The privacy damage is worse than we expect.
  - cbs 15y ago
    If companies could get shamed into doing anything, the world would be a different place. But to a company there is no such thing as shame, there is only the fear that public reaction will negatively impact their bottom line.
- masonlee 15y ago
  Beluga, Kik Messenger, Path, Hipster... Who else?
  - radishpower 15y ago
    I am thinking of precise reasons why these services want the e-mail addresses in the first place. Is it to create a social network graph of the email addresses? Does this mean that all of these small services have a social graph? That doesn't seem so bad given that most people have already given that to one very large institution.
    - artursapek 15y ago
      If registration requires an email, they can help you find your friends using the app.
      - radishpower 15y ago
        Ah. right. Probably shows I'm still practicing abstinence i.e. no smart phone with 3G plan yet. Still seems its a lot less to be concerned about in comparison to what other organizations own. I suppose the sneaky under the hood part is what's jarring.
splrb 15y ago
Thank goodness Apple is scrutinizing all these apps. I definitely like my walled garden well curated.
- teej 15y ago
  Surprise! Apple doesn't give a shit that this is happening. If they didn't want developers to have the data, they wouldn't have made the API public. Apple even touts this as a feature in their public-facing developer site! Quote from https://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/data-management.html https://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/data-management... "iOS apps even have access to a device’s global data such as contacts in the Address Book, and photos in the Photo Library" This is in no way a failure of the App Review process. This is a failure in the way Apple expects user data to be treated. Lots of developers do this. The only way to stop this is a change in Apple policy, end of story.
  - mihaifm 15y ago
    This seems like a serious policy 'bug' indeed. The app developers have their part of the fault, but if someone just gives you free stuff, why not just take it.
- foobarbazetc 15y ago
  Do you really expect Apple to MITM every app (and update) to make sure that every developer in the world isn't sending random stuff to their servers? Are you really that anti-Apple to believe that? Blame the developer, not the distributor.
  - bri3d 15y ago
    It would be absolutely trivial for Apple to flag apps which use the Address Book APIs for closer inspection (including making sure that the user has to opt in to have their Address Book sent anywhere) - the same Apple tool which detects access to unauthorized ("private") Objective-C APIs could just as easily flag access to the AddressBook framework.
  - 15y ago
atldev 15y ago
This is, of course, happening in a lot of apps and websites. I wrote a quick note about making it easier to understand TOS here: http://clearsignal.posterous.com/do-we-value-our-laundry-more-than-our-privacy http://clearsignal.posterous.com/do-we-value-our-laundry-mor.... Within minutes, olefoo pointed out that http://khulaproject.com/ http://khulaproject.com/ has already tried. Seems like something that could help.
Greenisus 15y ago
As an iOS developer, I've been surprised all along that the SDK gives you full access to the address book without asking for permission (like Core Location and the Apple Push Notification Service). I've always thought that would one day change, and I suspect that posts like this and the one about Path will make that happen.
- bigiain 15y ago
  I can see a good argument in favour of it - of _course_ I want non-apple apps to be able to autocomplete friends names/emails as I start typing them. And of _course_ apps need to be able to send a bunch of data "back home". Making sure that apps don't send the addressbook data from sentence 1 in a data block from sentence 2 is the problem...
- k-mcgrady 15y ago
  I'm also an iOS developer although I've never needed to use the Address Book API's. I always presumed that some sort of permission was required I'm really surprised it isn't. I actually think this is a bigger privacy concern than location access as not only are you giving away access to your contact details but everyone who has trusted you with theirs.
  - panacea 15y ago
    But we are living in a FaceBook World™. And 'contacts sharing' with companies is completely ubiquitous. I understand the complaints about all this, but isn't there a massive elephant in the room that everyone has temporarily forgotten?
- alastairpat 15y ago
  The problem is that making a change like requiring authorisation (à la Core Location) for Address Book would cause backwards compatibility hell.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    iOS could prompt the user for permission when the contact list is accessed, with temporarily/permanently allow/deny options. If the user says yes, the app gets access, if the user says no, the app gets "spoofed" access, to an empty contact list.
plasma 15y ago
What the hell, I definitely don't want some random app I installed getting access to my contacts, phone numbers, private notes and more. FARK.
jazzychad 15y ago
Surprise! Likewise, Instagram uploads your contact list to their servers (phone numbers, names, emails) to help find friends (confirmed with mitmproxy as well). At least you have to click "Find from my contact list" first. This practice is super-common. The last ordeal around this was a year or so ago with Kik, but then everyone stopped caring. At least Instagram is over https.
- mcav 15y ago
  Same with HeyZap.
- markchang 15y ago
  Right. Kik did it without having an opt-out. At least Instagram does it after you tell it to. Path and Hipster? They just do it. Hipster, to a lesser degree.
- LaGrange 15y ago
  Uh, if they do it after clicking "Find from my contact list", this is totally different, that's opt-in. I do think it should be possible to opt-out from being findable this way, but that's a separate, if related issue.
  - reidmain 15y ago
    There is also a difference between "uploads" and "sends". If they send my address book to their servers, compare it with current users and then discard it that is pretty good for an opt-in process. A lot of this seems to be they upload the address book to their servers and store it permanently. The fact that they don't state this and don't ask for permission is disturbing.
bri3d 15y ago
I wrote a little MobileSubstrate (Jailbroken iPhone) shim to intercept the most common API used to access this data, block its use, and alert the user when it's happening. https://github.com/bri3d/AddressBookPrivacy/downloads https://github.com/bri3d/AddressBookPrivacy/downloads It should be available in the BigBoss repository as "Address Book Privacy" sometime tomorrow. My tweak catches and displays the use of address book data as it happens, and based on my observations I think the Hipster version of address book theft is a lot less egregious than the Path one. Hipster accesses your address book only when you ask it to "Find Friends" - "Contacts" is selected by default. While this certainly shouldn't be the case, it's nowhere near as bad as Path, which sends all your contacts without asking every time you log in (along with again if you select "Find Friends").
- markchang 15y ago
  Cool. Too bad about the jailbreak requirement :). Hipster doesn't leak as much information, but it is almost just as persistent. You can uncheck the "Contacts" button when you enter that preference, but only after the app sends your data. Also, if you come back to the screen, it reverts to checked. They are really filter buttons, and not stateful, apparently. But yes, it doesn't happen every time.
  - DHowett 15y ago
    "Too bad about the jailbreak requirement :)" :( Jailbreaking means so many different things to different people. I know it causes issues with Apple-sanctioned updates, but sometimes those issues are just plain worth it. All the stability issues, all the battery life issues, and all of the downsides apart from a more complicated update process are first and foremost effectively made-up. There's no solid data to back those things. Jailbreaking has time and time again patched vulnerabilities that Apple didn't (in a timely manner), and proven that it is a valuable part of the ecosystem.
    - markchang 15y ago
      I only meant that it wouldn't improve the lives of the vast majority of iPhone users. No complaints about jailbreaking from me! :)
baddox 15y ago
I do not understand why anyone is complaining about anything other than perhaps Apple's choice to make this an app-level permission rather than a "one-off" permission.
- mdonahoe 15y ago
  Other reasons: 1. We are publicly shaming these apps to promote better behavior. 2. We are educating each other to be careful when using these apps.
FourSquareToo 15y ago
FourSquare Too. Here was their response to my complaint. Subject: Do you store my contacts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 17/07/2011 to privacy Hi. I recently downloaded the Android Foursquare application. It automatically started scanning the contacts on my phone. Questions: 1. Does the application upload my contacts to FourSquare? 2. If so, does FourSquare store my contacts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 18/07/2011 to <MYNAME> We do not store or upload contacts! It's a one-time search of your phone's contacts to find friends to add on foursquare. See more information at foursquare.com/privacy/grid and https://foursquare.com/legal/terms https://foursquare.com/legal/terms ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 19/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> Hi, I think you must upload my contacts to your servers to identify which ones are on foursquare. When you upload them, do you send them in plaintext or encrypted? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 19/07/2011 to <MYNAME> Right, yes, we do send info to the server but do not save anything. All foursquare pages are encrypted as of April 6. <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 20/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> It's nice to know your pages are encrypted, but my question relates to when you sent all my contacts to your server from your mobile app. Did it use an encrypted connection to do this? Thanks, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 20/07/2011 to <MYNAME> yes, any information sent via any foursquare page, mobile or otherwise, is encrypted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 20/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> Thanks for the confirmation. One final thing - it would be polite for your app to request permission before scanning my phone and uploading all my contacts to your server. Please consider it a complaint that it did not ask permission. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 20/07/2011 to <MYNAME> We totally agree! When you download foursquare, we list the permissions that you are giving us, including scanning your contacts list (which we do not save or store). See here: http://cl.ly/18433L2s3g1T13070y0X http://cl.ly/18433L2s3g1T13070y0X. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 21/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> We don't agree. It is not made clear that you are going to scan for my contacts and upload them. You should explicitly make me aware and ask for permission in advance of doing that. Furthermore, your tone and wilfully ignoring my legitimate complaint is annoying. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 21/07/2011 to <MYNAME> <MYNAME>, I'm sorry you feel that way! I have spent time talking to four different engineers (two server engineers about what info is stored and how information is transferred, and two Android developers) about your questions out of respect and concern for you as a user with a valid query. I take all user questions and concerns seriously and as a member of the Product team, pass on this sort of complaint so that we can be sensitive to that fact that if one person is asking/upset about something, there are probably others. Sorry if I did not do a good job of conveying the way I run community and support for foursquare in my tone. Sometimes email is hard in that sense. I hope you know that we care and appreciate your emails. Best, <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 21/07/2011 to <MYNAME> Also, since we don't save your contacts in anyway, I'm not sure that we are actually "uploading" them. Is there something else that is bothering you? Perhaps I'm not understanding your concern completely--we aren't telling your contacts that you are using foursquare nor are we automatically adding them as your friends, we're merely searching your phone's contacts for other people you know who are also using foursquare so that you can then decide which of those you'd like to send a friend request to. Can you please let me know what part of this you find troubling so I can pass on your concerns? Thank you! <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 21/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> Uploading means essentially the same thing as sending for the purposes of this complaint. uploading: present participle of up·load Verb: Transfer (data) to a larger computer system. As for my concern, I can only repeat myself. It is disappointing that you don't immediately understand why this is a problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 21/07/2011 to <MYNAME> Thanks for voicing your concern. I'm passing it on.
dumdumacct 15y ago
If apps spelled everything they were doing out for you all as you seem to want, you'd have something equivalent to a TOS to read. Only instead of legal jargon it would be technical jargon. You'd never read it. And then when it came out that the app was doing something that was described in it, you'd bitch and moan and complain just like you are doing now. I would venture to guess that a large majority of apps in the app store (iOS and Android) do the same thing Hipster, Path and other mentioned in this thread do and you don't even know. I don't even what to know what Google and Apple themselves are doing without telling anyone. TL;DR: Get over it. Move on.
- k-mcgrady 15y ago
  >> "Get over it." What a stupid response. I'm not a huge privacy advocate but this is a massive breach of trust/privacy. Not only are apps taking your personal contact information but the contact information of everyone you have in your address book. So regardless of your stance on privacy, the privacy of all of your contacts is also at stake.
  - dumdumacct 15y ago
    If I thought these companies were going to do something malicious with the data then it would be an issue. These companies aren't spammers. They aren't criminals. They don't plan to do anything malicious with the data. Your privacy, my privacy or any of my contacts privacy isn't at risk. It's not at risk but I don't think someone at Hipster is going through the data and using it in any way.
    - k-mcgrady 15y ago
      hey may not be using it maliciously (I don't think they are either) but they should be handling our data more carefully. And it's possible that they may use this data in the future. The part you should be worried about is the fact that they are taking the contact info of your friends and family. People who trusted you enough to give you their data. You/we the users should not get to make the judgement call as to whether or not we are going to give their data up.
Uchikoma 15y ago
One has to ask, why don't they upload hashes? This would be sufficient to check for friends (email,telephone). Why do they upload real data? Do they sell it? What happens when they go bankrupt?
- mdonahoe 15y ago
  It's slightly more work, and devs are lazy? Hashing doesn't really solve the entire problem, though it does prevent the service from getting addresses it doesn't already know. Allowing an app to see your contact list is an act of faith. Maybe bloom filters can save us? :)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
iscrewyou 15y ago
Android's "permissions" in the market aren't looking so bad now are they?
- robocat 15y ago
  I am normally careful to check permissions, but foolishly installed Skype app (I think Skype uploads complete phone address book when first run). And I wonder how many PhoneGap based applications (iPhone or Android) have XSS flaws that a hacker can springboard to snarf the local address book???!!!
  - robocat 15y ago
    XSS flaws like: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/skype_for_iphone_contact_theft/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/skype_for_iphone_con...
Shank 15y ago
Why would you not use HTTPS? At minimum? It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to launch a man in the middle attack and watch traffic from these devices. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't created a tool that just sniffs requests from apps, whilst stripping out important information.
jnye131 15y ago
This isn't new or surprising. Working as an iPhone contractor you get asked to do this sort of stuff all the time. Companies that give something away for free want your data. Simple. If someone was going to audit all the popular social apps in the app store I'm sure that the vast majority would behave in exactly the same way.
markchang 15y ago
Hipster CEO also apologizes for address-book-gate :). http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/08/hipster-ceo-also-apologizes-for-address-book-gate-calls-for-application-privacy-summit-guest-post/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/08/hipster-ceo-also-apologizes...
luckydev 15y ago
PATH = BITCH

291 points by markchang 15y ago

Unbelievable.

Making a prediction: When you wake up tomorrow morning, the front page will be filled with stories like these about every type of app you can think of. It will only get worse from here.

josephcooney 15y ago
I have little doubt. My only question/interest is - what is the most high-profile and also the most odd-ball app/company that will be found to have done this.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
benologist 15y ago
Worse is an interesting choice of words .... if a bunch of companies get shamed into respecting people's privacy then that's great, and if it gets the ball rolling and triggers the wrath of app stores ... that's even better.
- mdonahoe 15y ago
  Worse meaning that these two apps are only the tip of the iceberg. The privacy damage is worse than we expect.
- cbs 15y ago
  If companies could get shamed into doing anything, the world would be a different place. But to a company there is no such thing as shame, there is only the fear that public reaction will negatively impact their bottom line.
masonlee 15y ago
Beluga, Kik Messenger, Path, Hipster... Who else?
- radishpower 15y ago
  I am thinking of precise reasons why these services want the e-mail addresses in the first place. Is it to create a social network graph of the email addresses? Does this mean that all of these small services have a social graph? That doesn't seem so bad given that most people have already given that to one very large institution.
  - artursapek 15y ago
    If registration requires an email, they can help you find your friends using the app.
    - radishpower 15y ago
      Ah. right. Probably shows I'm still practicing abstinence i.e. no smart phone with 3G plan yet. Still seems its a lot less to be concerned about in comparison to what other organizations own. I suppose the sneaky under the hood part is what's jarring.

splrb 15y ago

Thank goodness Apple is scrutinizing all these apps. I definitely like my walled garden well curated.

teej 15y ago
Surprise! Apple doesn't give a shit that this is happening. If they didn't want developers to have the data, they wouldn't have made the API public. Apple even touts this as a feature in their public-facing developer site! Quote from https://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/data-management.html https://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/data-management... "iOS apps even have access to a device’s global data such as contacts in the Address Book, and photos in the Photo Library" This is in no way a failure of the App Review process. This is a failure in the way Apple expects user data to be treated. Lots of developers do this. The only way to stop this is a change in Apple policy, end of story.
- mihaifm 15y ago
  This seems like a serious policy 'bug' indeed. The app developers have their part of the fault, but if someone just gives you free stuff, why not just take it.
foobarbazetc 15y ago
Do you really expect Apple to MITM every app (and update) to make sure that every developer in the world isn't sending random stuff to their servers? Are you really that anti-Apple to believe that? Blame the developer, not the distributor.
- bri3d 15y ago
  It would be absolutely trivial for Apple to flag apps which use the Address Book APIs for closer inspection (including making sure that the user has to opt in to have their Address Book sent anywhere) - the same Apple tool which detects access to unauthorized ("private") Objective-C APIs could just as easily flag access to the AddressBook framework.
- 15y ago

atldev 15y ago

This is, of course, happening in a lot of apps and websites. I wrote a quick note about making it easier to understand TOS here: http://clearsignal.posterous.com/do-we-value-our-laundry-more-than-our-privacy http://clearsignal.posterous.com/do-we-value-our-laundry-mor.... Within minutes, olefoo pointed out that http://khulaproject.com/ http://khulaproject.com/ has already tried. Seems like something that could help.

Greenisus 15y ago

As an iOS developer, I've been surprised all along that the SDK gives you full access to the address book without asking for permission (like Core Location and the Apple Push Notification Service). I've always thought that would one day change, and I suspect that posts like this and the one about Path will make that happen.

bigiain 15y ago
I can see a good argument in favour of it - of _course_ I want non-apple apps to be able to autocomplete friends names/emails as I start typing them. And of _course_ apps need to be able to send a bunch of data "back home". Making sure that apps don't send the addressbook data from sentence 1 in a data block from sentence 2 is the problem...
k-mcgrady 15y ago
I'm also an iOS developer although I've never needed to use the Address Book API's. I always presumed that some sort of permission was required I'm really surprised it isn't. I actually think this is a bigger privacy concern than location access as not only are you giving away access to your contact details but everyone who has trusted you with theirs.
- panacea 15y ago
  But we are living in a FaceBook World™. And 'contacts sharing' with companies is completely ubiquitous. I understand the complaints about all this, but isn't there a massive elephant in the room that everyone has temporarily forgotten?
alastairpat 15y ago
The problem is that making a change like requiring authorisation (à la Core Location) for Address Book would cause backwards compatibility hell.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  iOS could prompt the user for permission when the contact list is accessed, with temporarily/permanently allow/deny options. If the user says yes, the app gets access, if the user says no, the app gets "spoofed" access, to an empty contact list.

plasma 15y ago

What the hell, I definitely don't want some random app I installed getting access to my contacts, phone numbers, private notes and more. FARK.

jazzychad 15y ago

Surprise! Likewise, Instagram uploads your contact list to their servers (phone numbers, names, emails) to help find friends (confirmed with mitmproxy as well). At least you have to click "Find from my contact list" first. This practice is super-common. The last ordeal around this was a year or so ago with Kik, but then everyone stopped caring. At least Instagram is over https.

mcav 15y ago
Same with HeyZap.
markchang 15y ago
Right. Kik did it without having an opt-out. At least Instagram does it after you tell it to. Path and Hipster? They just do it. Hipster, to a lesser degree.
LaGrange 15y ago
Uh, if they do it after clicking "Find from my contact list", this is totally different, that's opt-in. I do think it should be possible to opt-out from being findable this way, but that's a separate, if related issue.
- reidmain 15y ago
  There is also a difference between "uploads" and "sends". If they send my address book to their servers, compare it with current users and then discard it that is pretty good for an opt-in process. A lot of this seems to be they upload the address book to their servers and store it permanently. The fact that they don't state this and don't ask for permission is disturbing.

bri3d 15y ago

I wrote a little MobileSubstrate (Jailbroken iPhone) shim to intercept the most common API used to access this data, block its use, and alert the user when it's happening. https://github.com/bri3d/AddressBookPrivacy/downloads https://github.com/bri3d/AddressBookPrivacy/downloads It should be available in the BigBoss repository as "Address Book Privacy" sometime tomorrow. My tweak catches and displays the use of address book data as it happens, and based on my observations I think the Hipster version of address book theft is a lot less egregious than the Path one. Hipster accesses your address book only when you ask it to "Find Friends" - "Contacts" is selected by default. While this certainly shouldn't be the case, it's nowhere near as bad as Path, which sends all your contacts without asking every time you log in (along with again if you select "Find Friends").

markchang 15y ago
Cool. Too bad about the jailbreak requirement :). Hipster doesn't leak as much information, but it is almost just as persistent. You can uncheck the "Contacts" button when you enter that preference, but only after the app sends your data. Also, if you come back to the screen, it reverts to checked. They are really filter buttons, and not stateful, apparently. But yes, it doesn't happen every time.
- DHowett 15y ago
  "Too bad about the jailbreak requirement :)" :( Jailbreaking means so many different things to different people. I know it causes issues with Apple-sanctioned updates, but sometimes those issues are just plain worth it. All the stability issues, all the battery life issues, and all of the downsides apart from a more complicated update process are first and foremost effectively made-up. There's no solid data to back those things. Jailbreaking has time and time again patched vulnerabilities that Apple didn't (in a timely manner), and proven that it is a valuable part of the ecosystem.
  - markchang 15y ago
    I only meant that it wouldn't improve the lives of the vast majority of iPhone users. No complaints about jailbreaking from me! :)

baddox 15y ago

I do not understand why anyone is complaining about anything other than perhaps Apple's choice to make this an app-level permission rather than a "one-off" permission.

mdonahoe 15y ago
Other reasons: 1. We are publicly shaming these apps to promote better behavior. 2. We are educating each other to be careful when using these apps.

FourSquareToo 15y ago

FourSquare Too. Here was their response to my complaint. Subject: Do you store my contacts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 17/07/2011 to privacy Hi. I recently downloaded the Android Foursquare application. It automatically started scanning the contacts on my phone. Questions: 1. Does the application upload my contacts to FourSquare? 2. If so, does FourSquare store my contacts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 18/07/2011 to <MYNAME> We do not store or upload contacts! It's a one-time search of your phone's contacts to find friends to add on foursquare. See more information at foursquare.com/privacy/grid and https://foursquare.com/legal/terms https://foursquare.com/legal/terms ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 19/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> Hi, I think you must upload my contacts to your servers to identify which ones are on foursquare. When you upload them, do you send them in plaintext or encrypted? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 19/07/2011 to <MYNAME> Right, yes, we do send info to the server but do not save anything. All foursquare pages are encrypted as of April 6. <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 20/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> It's nice to know your pages are encrypted, but my question relates to when you sent all my contacts to your server from your mobile app. Did it use an encrypted connection to do this? Thanks, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 20/07/2011 to <MYNAME> yes, any information sent via any foursquare page, mobile or otherwise, is encrypted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 20/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> Thanks for the confirmation. One final thing - it would be polite for your app to request permission before scanning my phone and uploading all my contacts to your server. Please consider it a complaint that it did not ask permission. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 20/07/2011 to <MYNAME> We totally agree! When you download foursquare, we list the permissions that you are giving us, including scanning your contacts list (which we do not save or store). See here: http://cl.ly/18433L2s3g1T13070y0X http://cl.ly/18433L2s3g1T13070y0X. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 21/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> We don't agree. It is not made clear that you are going to scan for my contacts and upload them. You should explicitly make me aware and ask for permission in advance of doing that. Furthermore, your tone and wilfully ignoring my legitimate complaint is annoying. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 21/07/2011 to <MYNAME> <MYNAME>, I'm sorry you feel that way! I have spent time talking to four different engineers (two server engineers about what info is stored and how information is transferred, and two Android developers) about your questions out of respect and concern for you as a user with a valid query. I take all user questions and concerns seriously and as a member of the Product team, pass on this sort of complaint so that we can be sensitive to that fact that if one person is asking/upset about something, there are probably others. Sorry if I did not do a good job of conveying the way I run community and support for foursquare in my tone. Sometimes email is hard in that sense. I hope you know that we care and appreciate your emails. Best, <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 21/07/2011 to <MYNAME> Also, since we don't save your contacts in anyway, I'm not sure that we are actually "uploading" them. Is there something else that is bothering you? Perhaps I'm not understanding your concern completely--we aren't telling your contacts that you are using foursquare nor are we automatically adding them as your friends, we're merely searching your phone's contacts for other people you know who are also using foursquare so that you can then decide which of those you'd like to send a friend request to. Can you please let me know what part of this you find troubling so I can pass on your concerns? Thank you! <MYNAME> ✆ via gmail.com 21/07/2011 to <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> Uploading means essentially the same thing as sending for the purposes of this complaint. uploading: present participle of up·load Verb: Transfer (data) to a larger computer system. As for my concern, I can only repeat myself. It is disappointing that you don't immediately understand why this is a problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <FOURSQUARE-SUPPORT> ✆ 21/07/2011 to <MYNAME> Thanks for voicing your concern. I'm passing it on.

dumdumacct 15y ago

If apps spelled everything they were doing out for you all as you seem to want, you'd have something equivalent to a TOS to read. Only instead of legal jargon it would be technical jargon. You'd never read it. And then when it came out that the app was doing something that was described in it, you'd bitch and moan and complain just like you are doing now. I would venture to guess that a large majority of apps in the app store (iOS and Android) do the same thing Hipster, Path and other mentioned in this thread do and you don't even know. I don't even what to know what Google and Apple themselves are doing without telling anyone. TL;DR: Get over it. Move on.

k-mcgrady 15y ago
>> "Get over it." What a stupid response. I'm not a huge privacy advocate but this is a massive breach of trust/privacy. Not only are apps taking your personal contact information but the contact information of everyone you have in your address book. So regardless of your stance on privacy, the privacy of all of your contacts is also at stake.
- dumdumacct 15y ago
  If I thought these companies were going to do something malicious with the data then it would be an issue. These companies aren't spammers. They aren't criminals. They don't plan to do anything malicious with the data. Your privacy, my privacy or any of my contacts privacy isn't at risk. It's not at risk but I don't think someone at Hipster is going through the data and using it in any way.
  - k-mcgrady 15y ago
    hey may not be using it maliciously (I don't think they are either) but they should be handling our data more carefully. And it's possible that they may use this data in the future. The part you should be worried about is the fact that they are taking the contact info of your friends and family. People who trusted you enough to give you their data. You/we the users should not get to make the judgement call as to whether or not we are going to give their data up.

Uchikoma 15y ago

One has to ask, why don't they upload hashes? This would be sufficient to check for friends (email,telephone). Why do they upload real data? Do they sell it? What happens when they go bankrupt?

mdonahoe 15y ago
It's slightly more work, and devs are lazy? Hashing doesn't really solve the entire problem, though it does prevent the service from getting addresses it doesn't already know. Allowing an app to see your contact list is an act of faith. Maybe bloom filters can save us? :)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

iscrewyou 15y ago

Android's "permissions" in the market aren't looking so bad now are they?

robocat 15y ago
I am normally careful to check permissions, but foolishly installed Skype app (I think Skype uploads complete phone address book when first run). And I wonder how many PhoneGap based applications (iPhone or Android) have XSS flaws that a hacker can springboard to snarf the local address book???!!!
- robocat 15y ago
  XSS flaws like: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/skype_for_iphone_contact_theft/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/skype_for_iphone_con...

Shank 15y ago

Why would you not use HTTPS? At minimum? It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to launch a man in the middle attack and watch traffic from these devices. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't created a tool that just sniffs requests from apps, whilst stripping out important information.

jnye131 15y ago

This isn't new or surprising. Working as an iPhone contractor you get asked to do this sort of stuff all the time. Companies that give something away for free want your data. Simple. If someone was going to audit all the popular social apps in the app store I'm sure that the vast majority would behave in exactly the same way.

markchang 15y ago

Hipster CEO also apologizes for address-book-gate :). http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/08/hipster-ceo-also-apologizes-for-address-book-gate-calls-for-application-privacy-summit-guest-post/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/08/hipster-ceo-also-apologizes...

luckydev 15y ago

PATH = BITCH