Remains of the Day: Social Network Path Settles FTC Charge and New Privacy Risk

Path faces several privacy issues, Verizon launches a prepaid plan for 3G smartphones, Microsoft releases new Bing apps, and Netflix is unlocked on Xbox for one weekend only.

• Path Social Networking App Settles FTC Charges it Deceived Consumers and Improperly Collected Personal Information from Users' Mobile Address Books Mobile-only social network Path has a new privacy risk: the app uses metadata from uploaded photos to find location data, which it then will publish even if you've disabled location settings in the app. Path has stated that they were unaware of the issue and has submitted an update to Apple for review (Update: it's now live on the App Store). Today also saw Path agree to settle FTC charges that its users were deceived and had personal information collected from their phone's address books without consent. The company will pay an $800,000 civil penalty and delete any information collected from children under 13. They will also establish a comprehensive privacy plan and submit to privacy assessments every other year for the next 20 years. [CNET]
• Smartphone Options for the Budget-Minded Today Verizon launched prepaid plans for smartphones. Customers can choose between unlimited talk/text with 500MB of data for $60/month or $70 for the same with 2GB of data. The data plans are 3G-only. [Verizon]
• Bing Launches Five ?Apps for Office,' Extending its Data Banks Into the Desktop Productivity Suite Today Microsoft released five Bing 'Apps for Office' available for free in the Office Store. The new apps allow users to include data from Bing in their Office documents in different ways. The apps include Maps, Finance, News Search, Dictionary, and Image Search. [The Next Web]
• Xbox to ?Unlock' its Netflix App This Weekend, Granting Access to All Subscribers For a Mere Three Days If you own an Xbox 360 and want to stream Netflix from it, normally you have to pay $60/year for Xbox Live Gold to use the app in addition to the $7.99/month Netflix already costs. However, this weekend Microsoft will be dropping the restriction in order to promote Netflix's new original series House of Cards?which means you can access Netflix without being an Xbox Live subscriber for this weekend only. [The Next Web]
• Apple TV Said to Start Carrying HBO App Later This Year Apple TV is rumored to have an HBO Go app by the middle of next year. The app would still require users to have an HBO subscription. [Bloomberg]

Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/WNXSzEnsdVI/remains-of-the-day-social-network-path-settles-ftc-charge-and-new-privacy-risk

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