Apple Tries to Stop Developers Sharing Data on Users' Friends

Apple changed its App Store rules last week to limit how developers use information about iPhone owners’ friends and other contacts, according to Bloomberg.

The move cracks down on a practice that’s been employed for years. Developers ask users for access to their phone contacts, then use it for marketing and sometimes share or sell the information without permission from the other people listed on those digital address books. On both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android the tactic is sometimes used to juice growth and make money.

As Apple’s annual developer conference got underway, the company made many new pronouncements on stage, including new controls that limit tracking of web browsing. But the phone maker didn’t publicly mention updated App Store Review Guidelines that now bar developers from making databases of address book information they gather from iPhone users.

Sharing and selling that database with third parties is also now forbidden. And an app can’t get a user’s contact list, say it’s being used for one thing, and then use it for something else unless the developer gets consent again. Anyone caught breaking the rules may be banned.

While Apple is acting now, the company can’t go back and retrieve the data that may have been shared so far. After giving permission to a developer, an iPhone user can go into their settings and turn off apps’ contacts permissions. That turns off the data faucet, but doesn’t return information already gathered.