Apple app developers face privacy questions

London: Two US Congressmen have written to Apple and 33 publishers of social iPhone apps requesting details on how they gather, store and use data on their users, as the row over apps privacy rumbles on.

The pair Henry A. Waxman and G.K. Butterfield sit respectively on the Congress' energy and commerce committee and its commerce, manufacturing and trade subcommittee.

They are looking for answers following the controversy earlier this year around apps uploading their users' iPhone address books to their servers without asking permission.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook is receiving one of the letters due to his company publishing the Find My Friends app Apple is separately being questioned by the Congressmen over its wider iOS privacy-protection policies.

The letters are also being sent to some of the most prominent figures and companies in the social networking and mobile industries: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner, Twitter's Dick Costolo, Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, Instagram's Kevin Systrom and Pinterest's Ben Silbermann.

Path chief executive Dave Morin is also getting a letter. His company's app was the first to be fingered publicly for address-book uploading, although it soon emerged that many more apps were doing the same thing.

The other companies receiving letters are Foodspotting, Synthetic, Turntable.fm, Quora, Eye2i, Tapbots, Remixation, Schematic Labs, Massive Health, Trover, District Nerds, SoundCloud, Hipster, Forkly, Tiny Review, Fashism, Banjo, Localmind, Redaranj, Ness Computing, Socialcam, Piictu, Stamped, Glancee, d3i and SK Planet.

These companies aren't being accused of malpractice, it should be noted. "The apps were selected for the inquiry based on their inclusion in the ‘Social Networking' subcategory within the ‘iPhone Essentials' area of Apple's App Store," explain the Congressmen.

Each developer is asked nine questions about their app, how they deal with user data, and what privacy policies they have in place. Written responses are required by April 12. For now, the enquiry seems to be focused on iOS apps specifically, rather than those on rival platforms like Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. As the Congressional letters sent out this week show, the pressure for this awakening process is now being applied to a much wider cross-section of the apps industry.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd