2012-02-12

Path hysteria, now Instagram reacts

I'm not exactly an Apple fan by any means. But I can't get the hysteria about Path.
So Path took your contacts to compare if another user in your contacts is already using the service to notify you.
Path
Path (Photo credit: SimonQ錫濛譙)
This is pretty much the same than many apps are doing. I'm not sure why the panic started now, but Instagram now seems to react before the light sheds on them, too. Now so many services are doing this. And that's a logical thing. How else you could make this feature happen? Hashes? Well, this wouldn't work much. If you want to now e.g. if your friends on Facebook are using this service, they need clear names. May it be that the app can make a hash out of your contact-entry on the phone, but it would also require to make a hash from your Facebook account with exactly the same value. Clear names are okay to compare with a secured connection.

Now what are those companies doing? The only wrong I can see here is, they should have stated this clearly, with a big prompt, that they are using your complete contact-list for comparing. That's the only thing. And those hysteric users need to chill a little. There are much worse things going on, and Apple did good on not blocking Path from the App-Store.

Wait until the panic-makers find out that basically WhatsApp is doing the same thing. And Kik, and KakaoTalk, and ...

[via TheNextWeb]

Instagram Now Prompts You to Share Contacts:
"With Path coming in for some intense criticism last week for uploading a user’s entire contact list without their permission, it appears that Instagram has used its most recent update to safeguard itself and its users by introducing a new privacy prompt when matching friend lists."

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