U.S. Lawmakers Demand iPhone App Data From Twitter and Facebook

Major technology brands behind over 30 of the top Apple iPhone applications, including Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, have received letters from U.S. lawmakers requesting information on how the apps collect consumer data.

According to Reuters the letters were sent out on Thursday as a part of an ongoing inquiry by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The letters reportedly targeted companies with products in the App Store’s “iPhone Essential” area, giving them until 12 April to respond to the request.

The letter is yet to appear on the committee’s main site and V3, a ClickZ sister site, has not received a response to its requests for comment.

V3 contacted Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare for comment on the letter but had received no reply from any of the firms at the time of publication.

Though the letter was sent to firms using Apple’s platform, the news comes in the midst of wider concern over mobile permissions, with apps on Google’s Android operating system also falling under suspicion.

Most recently several popular iPhone and Android apps, including social networking tool Path, were discovered accessing and uploading address book data from users’ devices without permission.

Since the discovery lawsuits have been mounted by consumers against both the app’s developers and Google and Apple.

Earlier in March a lawsuit was mounted at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas accusing 18 companies, including Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Yelp, of distributing privacy-invading mobile apps.

This article was originally published on V3.