Just when the mobile phone industry was getting over the fiasco that involved CarrierIQ logging almost everything that took place on your phone, another similar story is now happening. Path is one of the more popular iPhone apps as it allows users to share things with their friends and family.

Sharing things like what they are doing, their musical interests and where they are at any given time. Now a recent discovery has shown that Path is actually loading up the phonebooks of users to their servers, something that is not necessarily agreed to by the users.

Path Users Feel the Angst

The data that is uploaded to the Path servers includes a contact’s full name, phone number and email address. By using a tool called mitimproxy, you can view all of the logs that the app makes on your phone. This allows the user to see the data that is being transferred to the servers from Path. Initially when you first make the account on the app your account’s data is sent over to the servers- your email, name, password and even the gender of the user.

Although this may seem like it is something that is pretty serious, the important thing to remember is that it is uploaded via a secure FTP client, putting you at very little exposure to risk for having this information seen. On top of that, the whole reason why they take the time and resources to upload this information and store it would be to make it easier for users to find the contact information of their friends and family.  As long as there’s no ulterior motive or malicious intent maybe its not quite a foul.

The CEO and founder of Path has acknowledged the findings and has publicly stated that in the next update they will make it optional whether or not you want your contact information uploaded to the Path servers for users to make it easier to find one another.