Path Spamming Contact Without Permission

After the scandal of path taking personal information from the user without permission, the company apologized, deleted the data, and updated the app to request permission first. But, in 2013 the incident still led to an $800,000 fine from the US Federal Trade Commission. It’s because the network had ended collecting the data of children without their parents, and also a lot of people that use the apps without permission.

When one problem fixed then another privacy scandal has opened up, with Path caught spamming contacts without permission. Stephen Kenwright described on his blog how the app had texted his parents, grandparents and an aunt to tell them he "had a photo to share with them". Worse, it all happened the morning after he'd deleted the app. Other users have complained about the same behavior on Reddit, on Twitter and in comments on Kenwright's blog.

Path promises that it is investigating what happened, but it's already a PR disaster. The company is fast developing a reputation for playing fast and loose with users' data, and this has done nothing to temper that image.

Critique:

I thought this is a bug. Maybe the Path developer make some mistake when updating the security of the application and cause this bug that make it look like path do it on purpose. Beside of that case, Path deserve the penalty to pay $800,000 fine because of their own mistake.

source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/02/social-network-path-growing-fast

Written by: Arya Deva Divayana (E1300172)