Twitter has acknowledged the "Find Friends" feature on its iPhone app stores contact lists on its servers, echoing a recent controversy surrounding the Path iOS app. UPDATE: Wednesday afternoon, Apple issued a statement saying iOS apps accessing users’ contact lists will require explicit permission.

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After users opt to have the Twitter app search their phones, the company stores their address book's names, emails addresses and phone numbers on its servers for 18 months.

Like many other iOS apps, Twitter allows users to have the app "scan your contacts for people you already know on Twitter." Until now, the storage aspect had not been explicitly stated in Twitter's privacy policy nor did the Find Friends function specify it would be transmitting and storing data.

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Twitter's policy stated that "Log Data" could include IP addresses, browser types, referring domains, pages visited, mobile carriers, device and application IDs, and search terms, among other activities.

Twitter says it will be updating its apps to clarify this process to users.

"We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users," a Twitter spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times. "Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, we are updating the language associated with Find Friends -- to be more explicit.

"In place of 'Scan your contacts,' we will use 'Upload your contacts' and 'Import your contacts' (in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, respectively)."

Twitter users can opt to remove their contacts from Twitter's database on the desktop website.

Twitter's announcement comes one week after Path -- a social network that limits your total connections to 150 -- was found to be storing contact lists on its servers by a Mac OS X developer.

Path CEO Dave Morin published an apology to users Feb. 8, writing that the company had since deleted all of the information stored in individuals' contact books, which Path had stored.

Path subsequently released a mobile update (version 2.0.6), which allows users to opt out of sending their contact lists to Path's servers and gives users the option to have the servers delete information should they have accidentally stored their data in the past.

Following the Path incident, two members of Congress sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook Wednesday, instructing the company to clarify its consumer privacy policies.

Are you concerned about what mobile apps do with your information? Are there any other apps of note you've caught storing your information? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, SimmiSimons

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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