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Path corrects its course

The social network apologizes for uploading personal contact information. Will all be forgiven?

 

Fernando Alfonso III

Internet Culture

Posted on Feb 8, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 9:40 pm CDT

Path is back on the right path.

While toying with Path’s API late Tuesday night developer Arun Thampi discovered that the San Francisco-based social network was storing his phone’s addresses on its servers. Thampi shared this information on his blog—and that eventually caught CEO Dave Morin’s attention.

Morin issued the following apology earlier this afternoon:

We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.

In further response to the controversy, the company has released a new update to the mobile application that asks users whether they want to share their phone’s contact with Path servers.

Photo by hakamadare

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*First Published: Feb 8, 2012, 6:51 pm CST