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Twitter grabs your data, keeps it for 18 months
Yeah, you thought that was just Facebook doing stuff like that? Or Path? Think again, Slim. The Twitter app for smartphones has a little button that says Find Friends. If you select it, Twitter grabs your friends names, phone numbers, email addresses, whatever is on there, and stores that information on its servers for 18 months. No permission is asked and the Twitter user agreement contains no language indicating that the company will do this. A Twitter spokesperson told the LA Times that this will soon be made more transparent:
"We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users," Penner wrote in an email. "Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, we are updating the language associated with Find Friends -- to be more explicit. In place of 'Scan your contacts,' we will use "Upload your contacts" and "Import your contacts" (in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, respectively).
As Internet and social sites grow, it seems it is impossible for anyone to identify what services and servers may be holding copies of their personal information. Many people are concerned about what information a website gathers from them, keeps and reuses. Some people worry about how the information will used or accessed. Others worry about security breaches that might put their information in unscrupulous hands. What seems to have stayed out of the public discussion on privacy rights is that a person's information does not have to be obtained directly from that person - instead a person's information can be handed over by a friend or contact as you describe in this article.
