permission. In a blog post by the CEO, the company apologized and changed its practices. Soon thereafter, in March 2012, the company received a request for information from Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-California) and G. K. Butterfield (D-North Carolina) along with 33 other app developers asking them to detail what information they collect from users and how they use it. In February 2013, the company was fined $800,000 by the FTC for storing data from underage users. The company would be required to have its privacy policies assessed every two years for the next twenty years. Along with the civil penalty, FTC has prohibited Path from making any misrepresentations about the extent it maintains confidentiality of its users' personal data. In April 2013, a user alleged that Path sent spam SMS invitations to his phone contacts. TechCrunch then speculated that Facebook blocked Path's "Find Friends" access due to this occurrence; however, neither Facebook nor Path confirmed or denied such reports. Even so, Path users can still share their posts to Facebook. Facebook also cut off "Find Friends" access to other apps such as MessageMe and Voxer, which were formally cited as competitors to Facebook, programmers such as Montana Mendy contended this notion. The company was named in a 60 Minutes report on Internet privacy and data brokers. References External links American social networking websites Social media companies of the United States Defunct social networking services Internet properties established in 2010 Internet properties disestablished in 2018 Image-sharing websites Social information processing IOS software Android (operating system) software American photography websites 2015 mergers and acquisitions Kakao Companies based in San Francisco Products and services discontinued in 2018