Path Reaches Settlement with FTC Over Address Book Privacy Concerns

The Path and Pinterest logos are way too similar. I get them confused all the time and it drives me crazy!

Stephen123 said:

You're actually saying you would fire an employee for pointing out that you're asking them to violate a Federal law?

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Imagine taking your ex-employer to court for unfair dismissal. You: "I was fired because I said what they asked me to do was a violation of Federal law. " Judge: "Do you have any evidence for that? " You: "They just got an $800,000 fine".

Me1000 said:

I'm really disappointed by the quality of the reporting here.
The $800K fine was for allowing 12 year olds the create accounts (a bug which was fixed long before the FTC got involved), but the entire post makes it sound like it's all about addressbook gate.

The FTC conducted an investigation because of the address book scandal, but the $800K had nothing to do with that.

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So they don't get fined for stealing user data unless it's from children? What's the difference???

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gnasher729 said:

Imagine taking your ex-employer to court for unfair dismissal. You: "I was fired because I said what they asked me to do was a violation of Federal law. " Judge: "Do you have any evidence for that? " You: "They just got an $800,000 fine".

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Well they clearly fired you for no good reason, so it seems like you'd have some defense. If you fire a black woman for anything, she could sue and win. For those who get offended easily, I'm not being racist, just telling the truth.

Why is that this story is receiving so much coverage and when Google was fined the BIGGEST amount of money in FTC's history all news outlets were like crickets? I see this as a proof of Google's monopolistic and complacent attitudes. Path's developers are being torn to shreds while Google is collecting all the money back to their bank accounts while spying on users.

1Alec1 said:

So they don't get fined for stealing user data unless it's from children? What's the difference???

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We only have their press release. Fact is that if they hadn't uploaded user's address books to their servers, nobody would have investigated anything, so they were fined _because_ of that (that's like a murderer getting a life sentence _because_ he crossed a red traffic light - if as a result a cop looked at his car and found a dead body).

But since most people would be much more concerned with the address book situation, their press release will obviously draw attention to the "children" problem.

mabaker said:

Why is that this story is receiving so much coverage and when Google was fined the BIGGEST amount of money in FTC's history all news outlets were like crickets? I see this as a proof of Google's monopolistic and complacent attitudes. Path's developers are being torn to shreds while Google is collecting all the money back to their bank accounts while spying on users.

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Google was fined 25 times more than this company. And as much as I dislike what Google was doing, intentionally circumventing user's privacy preferences both on Safari and Internet Explorer, grabbing the complete contents of a user's Address Book is a much more serious matter. If they are torn to shreds, they deserve it one hundred percent.