Apple is forced to respond to a congressional letter regarding data security on the iPhone

A few days ago on Habré, it was mentioned that the social service Path 2.0, thanks to the attentive programmer, was caught by the fact that the mobile iOS client of the service is sending the entire address book of the smartphone to its servers without the user's permission. Then the incident was exhausted by the fact that the management of the service acknowledged the fact of a potential threat to the privacy of the data and promised to remedy this situation in their mobile clients.

However, apparently, this fact was not in vain for Apple. Today, members of the United States Congress sent an official letter to Tim Cook in the name of the company that deals with data security issues that the iPhone has access to. It says that the official appeal was caused by complaints and concerns of users after the incident with Path, and the essence of the letter is this: if the device is able to get full access to private information without the knowledge of the user, how Apple regulates this ability of iOS and What are the recommendations for developers regarding this unsafe functionality?

In total, Apple has 9 questions formulated, most of which are directly related to the problem posed. For example, it is proposed to explain what Apple understands by “user data” (data about a user), how many such applications with such functionality are in the AppStore, and why it is not provided for the software to disable it.

The company’s response is offered until February 29.
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