14 DAY TRIAL // Following widespread panic that several iOS applications sucked up peoples’ address books and uploaded them to the cloud, Twitter has issued an update to their iPhone application to include a prompt that asks the express consent of the user to accessing their address book to find friends.
Twitter 4.1 delivers a ton of changes, all of which affect only the iPhone version of the application - not the iPad installment, according to the changelog.
Users get a new swipe shortcut, copy and paste for tweets and profiles, the ability to press and hold actions on links in tweet details, new font size settings, direct Message improvements and, most importantly, a “confirmation alert for Find Friends.”
The screenshot above shows how the app behaves, following this update, when the user wants to find friends based on their address book contacts.
The release notes also document changes like improved startup time and general performance improvement, improved image quality in tweet detail, accessibility improvements, a notice in Profile that shows whether a user follows you, verified badges in people search results, support for Turkish and “lots of other polish and bug fixes.”
Download Twitter 4.1 for iPhone (Free)
While this update was, indeed necessary, it’s still Apple who has to instruct its mobile operating system to not allow third-party applications to access a user’s address book and “steal” their contacts for uploading to the cloud.
This patch is to arrive in a future software update, according to the Cupertino, California-based company.
In a statement provided to the WSJ-owned All Things D, an Apple spokesman confirmed earlier this month that Apple was planning to roll out a fix for the iOS flaw.
“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”