Steve Jobs always had a strong view on privacy. This is clear to see in the video which was recorded at the D8 Conference in 2010, where he makes it known how much he disapproved of companies like Google or Facebook ultimately “stealing” users’ data.

Jobs said in the video: “Privacy means people know what they are signing up for. In plain English. That’s what it means.

“I’m an optimist. I believe people are smart and some people want to share more than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking if they get tired of you asking. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data.”

He spoke out against Silicon Valley companies for not taking privacy as seriously as Apple, and then went on to explain what Apple was doing to prevent privacy breaches.

Is Apple really that dedicated to privacy?

However, now someone has discovered that Path, and most likely other apps, were stealing users contacts’ information from their iPhone and iPad without informing the user.

You may be wondering how this happened, considering Jobs’ explanation of Apple’s approach to privacy:

“We take privacy extremely seriously.

“We do a lot of things to ensure that people understand what these apps are doing. That’s one of the reasons we have the curated app store. 

“We have rejected at lot of apps that wanna take a lot of your personal data and suck it up into the cloud.”

The big picture – Apple’s privacy dilemma

The sheer irony of Steve Jobs’ words come into full effect when you realise the scale of Apple’s privacy problem.

Data from your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch can easily be extracted and detained, without your permission.

Gizmodo reports: “Path and other apps—we don’t know which—steal your contacts’ information into their corporate servers without telling you about it. These apps use an address book service that Apple provides within iOS, which is similar to the geographic location service also present in the operating system that powers all the iDevices.

“The difference is that the iPhone’s GPS service requires you to actively approve whether the app can access it. Apple’s operating system asks you for permission every time an application wants to know your location, not the app itself. This is a barrier that the app can’t bypass. The security system is designed in this way so the app—which could be anything from a game to your typical free flashlight app—can’t spy on you without you noticing it.

“This works perfectly fine.

“The problem is that the address book service doesn’t use the same mechanism. It’s free for the taking. This is where the privacy clusterfuck ensues. Some app developers—like Path did—are taking advantage of this weakness. The fact is that, at this point, any app can access your address book and steal all your contacts. Just like that. We don’t know which apps may be doing this right now. That is a scary thought and Apple should have thought about it.”

Apple’s failure to recognise apps which compromise privacy issues

Jobs explained in the video how Apple analyzes apps before accepting them in its app store so it can identify if the app is able to steal your contact information data and “suck it up to the cloud.”

But this is exactly what Path succeeded in doing. Therefore Apple has failed in its mission to protect users’ privacy.

I wonder how Jobs would feel about this if he were alive today. What’s clear however is that Apple needs to sort out this situation…and fast.

What are your thoughts on this?

Are you worried about your data being stolen by Apple’s apps? Or are you not that bothered about apps retaining your personal data?