Path CEO Dave Morin: Mea Culpa

Finally. Bowing to the enormous pressure of an Internet scorned, Path CEO Dave Morin posted an apology to its users today on the Path blog. Path's PR agency sent the following email to me at around 3:00pm ET time after I emailed Morin last night for comment about Pathgate:

We are sorry. We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts. As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to journal and share life with close friends and family, we take the storage and transmission of your personal information very very seriously. Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts. In the interest of complete transparency we want to clarify that the use of this information is limited to improving the quality of friend suggestions when you use the 'Add Friends' feature and to notify you when one of your contacts joins Path––nothing else. We always transmit this and any other information you share on Path to our servers over an encrypted connection. It is also stored securely on our servers using industry standard firewall technology. We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we've deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path. In Path 2.0.6, released to the App Store today, you are prompted to opt in or out of sharing your phone's contacts with our servers in order to find your friends and family on Path. If you accept and later decide you would like to revoke this access, please send an email to service@path.com and we will promptly see to it that your contact information are removed. We care deeply about your privacy and about creating a trusted place for you to share life with your close friends and family. As we continue to expand and grow we will make some mistakes along the way. We commit to you that we will continue to be transparent and always serve you first, our users. We hope this update clears up any confusion. You can find Path 2.0.6 in the App Store here:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/path/id403639508?mt=8

Link to post: http://blog.path.com/post/17274932484/we-are-sorry

Needless to say, I've already emailed my opt-out request to service@path.com. The Twitterverse seems pretty equally divided on the topic:

@JasonOGrady While it seemed scary at first, I think their quick response andupdate was made the mess very well handled. Opted in for... — HK (@sjwasawesome) February 9, 2012

@JasonOGrady It's a social app. Of course it had access to my AB.They showed up in the App. DLing and storing it is Path's wrong doing. — Randal Santia (@sw0rdfish) February 9, 2012

Deleted #Path due to negligent privacy practices.Until opt out is permanent & I can manually delete my data, they're boycotted! @JasonOGrady

— addicted2iphone (@addicted2iphone) February 9, 2012

So, is it enough? I'd love to hear from other Path users on Morin's response. Will you continue to use the service? Follow me on Twitter for early access to my posts. Tweet me with the hashtag #ZDNET if you'd like to be considered for inclusion in a post. Follow @JasonOGrady