TMCnet Feature

Many Twitter (News - Alert) users are all atwitter after the microblogging site admitted to downloading a users’ address books and storing the data for 18 months.

Twitter confirmed to the news media that once mobile users tap the "Find friends" feature on the site’s smartphone app, Twitter downloaded the users' full address book. That means names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers are stored on the site’s servers for a year and a half, according to a report from The Los Angeles Times.

“This has sparked a modicum of outrage, especially since the app doesn't make this clear and because people who have never even used Twitter are vulnerable to their private information being stored if just one of their friends uses the app,” according to a comment posted by TG Daily. “People simply do not like it when apps download private information without user consent,” adds a comment from MediaBistro.

Meanwhile, Twitter says it will change the wording it uses about the downloading and storing of contacts. The overall policy on data storage will basically remain as is, however, TG Daily adds.

"We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users," Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner told The LA Times in an e-mail. "We are updating the language associated with Find Friends – to be more explicit. In place of 'Scan your contacts,' we will use ‘Upload your contacts’ and ‘Import your contacts.’” Penner also points out users of Twitter can remove the contact lists from the site, by clicking a "remove" link on the Twitter webpage.

In a related story, last week a developer discovered that Path via iPhone (News - Alert) downloaded a user’s entire contact list to its servers without letting the user know. In a blog post Path apologized, and deleted the data, as well as updated its iOS app, according to a report from TMCnet. “We've deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers,” Path told its users in the blog post.

MediaBistro, looking at the two examples, says it seems like Path “was just following industry standards.”