w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 1 Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:43:00 PDT
Earlier this year, Apple came under fire from consumers advocates and
Congress after it was discovered that apps, most notably Path, were
uploading users' entire address books to their servers without alerting
users or asking for authorization. Path deleted the information, but a pair
of U.S. Congressmen sent a letter to Apple asking for information on the
company's data collection policies.
More recently, LinkedIn came under fire for transmitting information from
iOS calendar entries back to its servers in plain text.
In the OS X Mountain Lion beta, Apple began requiring apps to get explicit
permission to access user's address book information, and Apple PR said in
February that any iOS app "wishing to access contact data will require
explicit user approval in a future software release."
Starting with iOS 6, Apple now requires apps to get explicit user permission
before accessing Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Photos. From the "Data
Privacy" section in Apple's iOS 6 Release Notes:
In addition to location data, the system now asks the user’s permission
before allowing third-party apps to access certain user data, including:
- Contacts
- Calendars
- Reminders
- Photo Library
For contact, calendar, and reminder data, your app needs to be prepared to
be denied access to these items and to adjust its behavior accordingly. If
the user has not yet been prompted to allow access, the returned structure
is valid but contains no records. If the user has denied access, the app
receives a NULL value or no data. If the user grants permission to the app,
the system subsequently notifies the app that it needs to reload or revert
the data.
As the iPhone and iPad have grown in popularity, Apple has come under
increasing scrutiny over the privacy practices of both Apple and developers
participating in the App Store ecosystem. Last year, Senator Al Franken
asked both Apple and Google to require app developers to have "clear and
understandable" privacy policies.
Apple later agreed to comply with a new California law requiring links to
privacy policies in consistent locations and provide a method for users to
report apps that do not comply with privacy requirements.
Congress also got involved over the disclosure of location information to
app makers, going so far as to introduce a bill that would force companies
to get explicit authorization before disclosing the user's location to
anyone. Apple now asks the iOS users if Location Services should be enabled
during the initial setup process.
iOS 6 is currently in beta and is expected to be publicly released this fall. |
|
