Foursquare Shuts Down Location API for “Girls Around Me” App

A recent application that allowed users to spot the girls that were within their vicinity has had some of its rights revoked by Foursquare.  The app, called “Girls Around Me”, was scanning public Foursquare and Facebook to determine whether there were any females in your location.  If a girl had checked in to a location near you or had listed personal location information on Facebook, GAM would find this and show their position overlaid on a map.  Obviously, when this came to light people were a bit unnerved by the whole thing.
The app was first discovered by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac and has since gone viral.  John tells the interesting story of showing this app to friends to set their “skin crawling”, and explains how the most worrying thing about the app is how it uses public information — nothing the app is doing is technically forbidden.  It raises a few questions for platform creators — questions that other services Tumblr have been facing recently: Do you draw moral and ethical boundaries on the content on your site?
It seems like the answer is yes for extreme cases like these.  There’s no reason to let this application continue to provide potentially dangerous information to people, and Foursquare took the opportunity to emphasize this by shutting down GAM’s access to the Foursquare location API.  This was followed by Apple taking the application down from the App Store.

Path Apologizes, Deletes All Address Book Data

Dave Morin, the CEO of beleaguered social network Path, posted an apology today addressing the recent controversy over how the app accesses information on a user’s phone. Saying the the company made a mistake, Morin promises Path has purged all address-book data from its servers.
In the blog post, titled simply “We are sorry,” Morin says Path values its users’ trust more than anything, which is why the company opted to delete the “entire collection” of user-uploaded contact information. (The full text is below.)
“We made a mistake,” Morin writes. “Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.”
In the apology, Morin reiterated that Path takes the storage and transmission of personal information “very, very seriously” and said the data was used only as a friend-suggestion tool and to notify users when contacts joined the network. Morin says the information was always encrypted during transmission and stored on Path’s servers using “industry standard firewall technology.”


In an update to the iOS app, which is now available on the App Store, Path version 2.0.6 will prompt users to opt in or out of sharing their phones’ contacts with the app. As before, if users change their minds, they can email Path’s customer service department and the company promises to delete the information from its servers.
After downloading the update, the app will prompt you to let it access your address-book data with the following screen:

The whole controversy mirrors similar privacy issues that arose around Facebook, specifically the gathering of user information and how the social network shares that data with third parties such as advertisers. Those issues eventually led to an FTC investigation of Facebook, which ended with a settlement last year in which the company submitted itself to regular privacy audits.
Has Path done enough to put this controversy to rest? Let us know what you think of the company’s apology and remedy in the comments.
Here’s the full text of Path’s apology:

We are sorry.

We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts.
As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to journal and share life with close friends and family, we take the storage and transmission of your personal information very, very seriously.
Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.
In the interest of complete transparency we want to clarify that the use of this information is limited to improving the quality of friend suggestions when you use the ‘Add Friends’ feature and to notify you when one of your contacts joins Path––nothing else. We always transmit this and any other information you share on Path to our servers over an encrypted connection. It is also stored securely on our servers using industry standard firewall technology.
We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.
In Path 2.0.6, released to the App Store today, you are prompted to opt in or out of sharing your phone’s contacts with our servers in order to find your friends and family on Path. If you accept and later decide you would like to revoke this access, please send an email to service@path.com and we will promptly see to it that your contact information is removed.
We care deeply about your privacy and about creating a trusted place for you to share life with your close friends and family. As we continue to expand and grow we will make some mistakes along the way. We commit to you that we will continue to be transparent and always serve you, our users, first.
We hope this update clears up any confusion. You can find Path 2.0.6 in the App Store here.
Sincerely,
Dave Morin
Co-Founder and CEO

Occupy Protestor’s Twitter Account Subpoenaed

Smacked with yet another subpoena, Twitter must submit an Occupy protestor’s account information to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office — unless the account holder can stop the order before Feb. 8.
The District Attorney’s Office issued a subpoena for Malcolm Harris (at the Twitter handle @destructuremal) on Jan. 26.
Harris is the managing editor for the blog The New Inquiry, which seeks to explore ideas through criticism and examination. He alleges via Twitter that the District Attorney’s Office is only requesting three-and-a-half months of his account information because of a disorderly conduct violation he was slapped with during the Brooklyn Bridge protest and subsequent arrests
“I’m not sure why they’ve singled me out, but I’m not too worried,” Harris told Mashable. “The charge against me is disorderly conduct, which is a violation, not even a misdemeanor, for blocking traffic, just like the other 700 people arrested. ”
Harris is due to appear in court for that violation on Feb. 29.
The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on this issue. Mashable also asked if the DA would subpoena Twitter for account information for the hundreds of other people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge during the protests. The office declined to comment.
It’s not clear from the subpoena what specific information the District Attorney’s Office is looking for. If Twitter does not hand over Harris’ account information from Sept. 15, 2011 to Dec. 31, 2011 executives could serve one year in prison and face a (nominal for Twitter) $1,000 fine.
In his stream of tweets, Harris thanks Twitter for informing him of the request for his account information even though it says not to.
He tweeted, “Don’t worry @twitter, when they ask how I got the subpoena, I’ll just tell them a little birdy told me.”.
Harris said that he hopes he can prevent the order from being carried out and send a message to protestors that it’s safe to use Twitter for protests.
“But if we win, it’s a sign to protesters that what they say online doesn’t just belong to the government to use against them,” he said.
Harris said he’s pleased with the way Twitter has handled this issue.
“Twitter so far has been really great, actually. They broke the gag order at the bottom of the subpoena to send it to me, and have agreed pending a motion to quash it not to move forward on disclosure,” Harris says. “Twitter could have just provided that information to the DA without telling me, and I may not have found out until my own words were being used against me in a court of law.
“I’m not usually one to hand out any sort of credit to social media giants, but they definitely saved me from a surprising trial.”
A Twitter spokesperson Mashable reached out to declined to comment, but said, “to help users protect their rights, it’s our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so. We outline this policy in our law enforcement guidelines.”
Twitter’s policies dictate that the company will comply with government-issued subpoenas but inform users before giving their information to the government, unless the request is accompanied by a statute or gag order to keep it quiet.
In December of last year, the Boston District Attorneys Office issued a subpoena for two Twitter accounts of alleged protestors. The Boston DA revealed its lack of knowledge about social media when it requested a user’s name and handle, plus two hashtags. Twitter also informed those account holders of the request for information despite the fact that it was made private.
Earlier this month, the state of Texas issued a subpoena to Automattic, Inc., the creators of free blogging platform WordPress.com, to access an occupy supporter’s blog and reveal the person’s identity.
You can view all three subpoenas here: [Scribd account].