The app-developing companies’ practice of sweeping the personal information of the users from their smartphone’s address book came under the scrutiny of the members of Congress on Wednesday, in the wake of widespread media reports that taking users’ data without permission was apparently an "industry best practice."

According to reports, it has become somewhat of a routine practice for companies – like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, among a number of others - which develop apps for the Apple as well as Android-based devices, to gather the smartphone users’ personal data from the address book, without the knowledge of the users. In fact, some companies also store this data on their own computers.

The users’ personal data is collected by the app-makers for quickly expanding the network of people who use their program. The issue came out last week when one developer found that Path social network was uploading smartphone users’ complete address books to its servers without permission.

Even though Path has now stated that it will discontinue its practice of sweeping users’ data and will also destroy the personal information which it has gathered, the matter is far from resolved because there are a horde of other apps which collect users’ address books.

With technology blog Venturebeat recently reporting that there seemingly were dozens of apps for Apple devices which were taking users' address books at will, the Future of Privacy Forum’s director Jules Polonetsky said during a Wednesday interview: “It's time for app developers to take responsibility for ensuring that users know what they're doing.”