Upcoming iOS versions will ask for user permission before uploading contacts data

Anonymously uploading contact data to servers without the users permission is a common practice among a lot of popular apps such as Path, Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare... etc, which use this data to find other people you know who may also be using that service.

But even though Path later apologized and deleted the data from their servers, and also issued an update that explicitly asks for your permission before uploading your contacts, the issue continued to escalate until it eventually reached Apple. Apple announced that it improve iOS privacy so it will ask user permission to share contacts with Apps, Apple said:

"We are 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."