Twitter Also Uploads Address Book to Its Servers And Stores it For 18 Months

Last week, a developer based in Singapore discovered that Path - the personal life-sharing service with more than 2 million users uploads the entire address book to its servers.

Path has since apologized for the lack of foresight, released an update version of the app, which explicitly requests users for permission to upload their address book to its servers and has also deleted all the address book data uploaded prior to that from its servers.

But while Path took brunt of the blame for the privacy issue, it has been revealed that it was not the only company that uploaded the address book to its servers. Instagram - a popular camera app quietly released an update that added privacy controls (as they uploaded the address book without permission as well) along with some new features.

The Los Angles Times now reports Twitter has also confessed that they upload a user's address book to their servers when the users taps on the "Find friends" feature on their iPhone app and keeps the data on its servers. Twitter says that it plans to update the app to clarify that user contacts will be uploaded and stored.

"We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users," Penner wrote in an email. "Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, 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" (in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, respectively).

If you've time then checkout The Verge's article on this issue, which provides information about which apps have your uploaded your data and how they're getting it.