The recent debacle about the much hyped social network app Path which uploads the whole contact information on your iPhone into their server turned on a huge speculation about safety of personal information. Application developer Ryan Petrich developed a new application for jailbroken iPhones which protect your contact date from being accessed without authorization.
The jailbreak community is always know to have come for aid of iPhone users when needed well before Apple has. Just within a day of internet going ga ga over path’s unauthorized uploading of private data we have an app that can protect users from it. The application “ContactPrivacy” can be found and installed from cydia following the following steps.
- Go to “Manage” tab on cydia.
- Add a new repo in cydia “http://rpetri.ch/repo”
- Go to “Search” tab on cydia and search for “ContactPrivacy” and install it
Once you are done installing the application you will not find any visual changes on SpringBoard but the app protects your data by running in background. Whenever any application tried to access your contacts it prompts for your approval.
But there is a catch with this application, some apps are designed to work only when they can access the contacts database, denying their request explicitly might result in the app to crash or malfunction. But, ContactPrivacy is one app which respects the privacy of users and helps them in protecting their data.