Apple to Require User Permission for Contact Data

No doubt in response to last week’s controversy about Path uploading user’s entire address book, Apple has issued the following statement to AllThingsD:

“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told AllThingsD. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

So, now we wait to see if it comes with iOS 5.1 in a month or so, or if Apple rolls out iOS 5.0.2 to patch this up a little faster. It’s a good response from Apple, since Path isn’t the only app out there that had been doing this.