Path, a small social network that limits the amount of friends you can have to “only” 150 people, went through a major shit storm last month. It was discovered that as soon as you install and launch their application it uploads your complete address book to Path’s servers. Why did they do this? So they could show you which of your friends are already using Path. The internet freaked out to put it mildly, and Path’s CEO, Dave Morin, issued an apology and promised to delete all the personal data they were storing. Apple’s response to all this was to issue an update to iOS so that a user now has to give explicit permission to an application so that it can access data from the address book. There’s more to this story though. According to sources who have spoken to Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with several other Apple executives, dragged Dave to Cupertino, strapped him to a table, and then proceeded to waterboarded him for approximately 12 hours to set him straight. We’re joking of course, but still, Apple was so miffed about the bad publicity that iOS got thanks to Path that they had to have a chat with Morin.
The bigger question here isn’t about Path, or iOS, or any other smartphone platform for that matter. What’s truly important is why do people think they don’t have to sacrifice anything to use a free service? Google’s services are free, so are Microsoft’s, and so is Facebook. Do you honestly believe that they all build server farms out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they mine all the data you probably don’t even know you’re leaving behind when you use their stuff. They then sell that data to advertisers to recuperate their investments, and if they’re lucky, they’ll also make some money.
Grow up.