A very curious federal lawsuit was filled last Wednesday, it accuses the developer Storm8 of stealing users phone numbers using their iPhone apps. We’ve heard about a similar case before where a Swiss developer collected the phone numbers of his app users and would call them to pitch the paid version but it was shut down pretty quickly. This time however the accusation is really serious, Storm8’s sold over 20 million apps…

According to the lawsuit, their apps would be

using a secret code that bypassed safeguards built into the iPhone to prevent the unauthorized snooping of user information

Storm8 protests by claiming they have no need in collecting their customer’s numbers, unfortunately it’s not the first time they get accused of this.

What surprises me is that the iPhone doesn’t prevent apps from accessing your contacts, so what safeguard are they talking about ? On top of that the approval process is there to avoid this kind of problems so it’s very likely that this whole lawsuit is just a scam.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough, the concerned apps include : “World War, iMobsters, Racing Live, Vampires Live, Kingdoms Live, Zombies Live, and Rockstars Live”.

But would you care if they really did ?

[via The Register]