US Congress Asks Facebook and Twitter for Privacy Details

Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, as well as 31 other technology companies, have been sent letters from a US congressional subcommittee asking for details about how they collect and store their users data via their mobile apps.

“Following recent reports that apps could collect address book information and photos without notice and consent from users of Apple’s mobile devices, the members are seeking to better understand what, if any, information these particular apps gather, what they do with it, and what notice they provide to app users,” said the two Congressmen who are responsible for sending the letters.

The men have also requested details from Apple about its policies concerning iOS, its mobile operating system.

Last month, Twitter acknowledged that it had copied the content of peoples’ entire address books from their mobile phones and stored the information on its servers, without many of its users realizing.

As a result of this practice coming under scrutiny, the San Francisco-based micro blogging company has promised to update its privacy settings to ensure it is more explicit about what personal data people are sharing when using Twitter on their smart phones, as stated by The Telegraph.

The issue is not just one affecting Twitter mobile users. A week earlier, a new American social network called Path, came under fire after it emerged that the site was automatically uploading users’ address books and storing the information on its servers, without gaining consent from its members.