Twitter data collection a \'big issue\' for privacy-keen Kiwis

Twitter's admission that its iPhone app was gathering address book data without telling users is a huge issue for brand new Zealanders who're used to good privacy protections, a tech expert says.

The social media service has promised to make its privacy guidelines more transparent after it was revealed its iPhone app collected users' personal information without their consent.

Collecting data without permission is a contravention of Apple's guidelines for app developers, with the tech giant promising to crack down on any app developers that achieve this.

Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen said the revelation was "a tremendous issue for brand spanking new Zealanders".

"We have such good privacy laws and we're used to companies gathering information for one purpose, they can not use it for something else. So we're quite used to that here, and naturally here is an American company, so none of it applies," he told APNZ.

Many New Zealanders doesn't mind gifting away personal information that improved services if companies were transparent about it, he said.

"But certainly people do get quite caught out by one of these thing ... If it is not transparent, it's quite abhorrent. They have got to inform me about it up-front."

Assistant Privacy Commissioner Katrine Evans said: "It's normal for social networking services to give to look through existing contact lists but companies should be extremely clear in telling customers what they'll do with their information.

"They should have amazing reasons to replicate contact lists and will only accomplish that after gaining customers' explicit consent. Companies also should delete the info as quickly as possible. People have to be careful in the event that they have confidential numbers of their contacts.''

Privacy issues have landed tech giants Facebook and Google in hot water, with Apple and Twitter just the most recent, Mr Brislen said.

"It is a two-fold problem. Firstly, they're growing so fast that they do not necessarily know what each different portion of their very own business is doing. And secondly, they're all run by geeks, after which the geeks are likely to build this stuff in and say sorry as opposed to permission.

"All too often, privacy isn't necessarily their first port of call when they're desirous about these items - they do it because they could."

Mr Brislen said the problem wouldn't affect Google's popular Android mobile operating system, which requires app developers to invite for users to conform to explicit privacy permissions.

"That's really the fantastic thing about the Android environment - while you do join an application, it tells you precisely what it'll do, so that you can't then be surprised afterward when it's taking your location or your address details or whatever."

Mr Brislen said it was hard to claim what number of people were using apps like Twitter in New Zealand, because often people were using multiple apps and services across multiple platforms.

Neither Apple nor Google couldn't provide data on what percentage times the Twitter app was downloaded from their app stores in New Zealand.

Twitter didn't reply to a request for comment, but a spokeswoman told international media the corporate desired to be clear and transparent in its communication with users.

"Along those lines, in our next app updates, that are coming soon, we're updating the language related to Find Friends to be more explicit."

An Apple spokesman told APNZ in an email that apps which collected or transmitted a user's contact data without their prior permission were in violation of its guidelines.

"We're working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have now done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data would require explicit user approval in a future software release."

- APNZ

By Matthew Backhouse | Email Matthew