Noted

After the whole incident with Path, there has been a lot of discussion for the last week or so around the unrestricted access to people’s Contacts.

A few days after the news broke, I immediately thought of what Steve Jobs had to say on privacy at the D8 Conference. For those of you who don’t remember, here’s the video clip. The exact part starts around 2:35. Have a look:

Ask ‘em. Ask ‘em every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of you asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re gonna do with their data.

The iOS Alert View is great for things which aren’t accessing anything, but need a decision to continue with a task that was initiated by a user (in most cases). Some apps today use the Alert View for asking the user permission to access data on the device, with a vague description.

Access to sensitive and personal information needs to be better presented by the means of a different, and more detailed layout. Even Facebook has a good interface for explaining exactly what the want access to and what they plan on doing if you give them access. Yes, even Facebook.

Maybe the brains in Cupertino are already heads down working on a better way to request information, or maybe they’re just patching up the current method. Maybe only the email, first name, and last name fields will be accessible. Or maybe the app will specifically list what it needs access to — in which case there would have to be a new interface.

What has been really interesting though, is that anytime there is any sort of privacy or bug that affects a lot of people, the Apple community talks endlessly about it. They don’t shy away from it, or wait till it blows over. It’s talked about and it eventually is heard by Apple and fixed.

On similar issues with Android, however, when news breaks that such and such app has access to your text messages, or personal data can be accessed maliciously, there really is no discussion around it. iOS users laugh at Android, Android users defend it however they can, and then we never really hear about it.