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That being said, I wholeheartedly agree it should be opt-in (or at least have an opt-out) for people who are concerned about their personal data.
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>we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval. "Proactively?" How do you get into the Social Networking business and not see this issue coming before the first line of code is written? [re: hashing] >This is a good alternative solution which we'll look into. Thanks for the idea. Again,…
I think the simplest explanation is that he's playing dumb.
> Why wasn't this [sending all the contacts to your servers without users knowing] an opt-in situation to begin with? Isn't that against Apple's own T&Cs?
and the Path CEO replied:
> This is currently the industry best practice and the App Store guidelines do not specifically discuss contact information. However, as mentioned, we believe users need further transparency on how this works, so we've been proactively addressing this.
Really guys? REALLY? This is why developers need explicit guidelines, because as they just demonstrated if there are no guidelines companies default to the thing that exploits the end user! (incidentally, its unfair to pick on Path too much as almost all social networking applications do exactly this also.)
I actually cringed when I read this "however, as mentioned, we believe users need further transparency on how this works" ... which is why it took someone running a proxy and writing a blog post for you to suddenly be transparent about it. Mind blowing. Why even say that?
Btw, times like this? You destroy any and all credibility when you say you are trying to build a company that is built to last or one that is going to follow in the footsteps of Apple.
Apple would never do this to their users.
(do not make this a discussion about the evil and good sides of Apple. Apple has repeatedly not bowed to companies desires for owning contact information and I expect they will fix this contact hole in the near future.)
It's sad because I respect Path and their love of design. But design isn't just about how it looks. It needs to resonate through the entire vision, company, product, and how you treat people.
Call me crazy, but I prefer it when companies do this. If I'm interested in using their service, then I'd be happy to be alerted when my friends sign up for it. That being said, I wholeheartedly agree it should be opt-in (or at least have an opt-out) for people who are concerned about their personal data.
If they had asked up front for permission this article would not have been written.
Honest question: Isn't this within the kind of behavior that AppStore reviews are supposed to prevent, at least if there isn't an app specific functional explanation for it? Does Apple have a list of what kind of behavior like this is tolerated or does word just get out about what they don't reject?
Well, since you only ever only submit the compiled application binary to Apple, it'd be pretty darn hard for them to detect behaviour like this. Especially if the code to do so is obfuscated, and/or the data is smuggled out via SSL (or worse, steganography-style piggy-backed on to other data). Sometimes it's tempting to speculate whether the real purpose of the app store review team is just to ensure developers aren'…
As far as I know Apple was not interested.
Here's the paper if you want to take a look: http://seclab.cs.ucsb.edu/media/uploads/papers/egele-ndss11....
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At that point it's also useless for matching.
It wouldn't be a strong signature, it would simply be the other half of the number pair. Numbers A and B both have easy access to A:B and B:A. The hashes for a given user could still be attacked using their phone number, but a global table wouldn't work.
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Like FB apps, even legit Android apps ask for the moon, with no option to dole out granular permissions. "The Weather Channel" is a default icon suggesting a free download on the Kindle Fire. It asks for: Set the wallpaper Send SMS messages Write to external storage Access info about Wi-Fi networks Access coarse location Initiate a phone call without going through the Dialer user interface for the user to confirm the…
CyanogenMod allows the user to remove specific permissions frmo specific apps. If more users used CyanogenMod, more app developers would become compatible.
Does this mean that the standard HTTPS stack on the iPhone is insecure? Shouldn't certificate verification fail when it attempts to send data via the mitmproxy?
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Well, since you only ever only submit the compiled application binary to Apple, it'd be pretty darn hard for them to detect behaviour like this. Especially if the code to do so is obfuscated, and/or the data is smuggled out via SSL (or worse, steganography-style piggy-backed on to other data). Sometimes it's tempting to speculate whether the real purpose of the app store review team is just to ensure developers aren'…
A postdoc in my lab published an academic paper that did exactly this: automated static analysis of iOS compiled binaries for privacy violations. As far as I know Apple was not interested. Here's the paper if you want to take a look: http://seclab.cs.ucsb.edu/media/uploads/papers/egele-ndss11....
(I'll go back and read the paper in more detail soon)
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You really don't need to upload address book for that. Sending just hash sum of each of phone, address, name, and email would be enough to make the matching.
Hashing phone numbers doesn't do much since the space is so small.