Today’s Top Stories: Facebook Account Verification, iPhone Contacts Controversy

Today’s Top Stories: Facebook Account Verification, iPhone Contacts Controversy Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Facebook to Offer Account Verification to Some Users

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Facebook will start offering account verification to users with high subscriber count, TechCrunch reports. Verified accounts will not have any sort of badge to distinguish them from regular accounts, but they will let users have nicknames and appear more frequently in the “people to subscribe to” list.

Apple: iOS Apps Will Require Permission to Access iPhone Contact List

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After Path and Twitter admitted their iPhone apps access and store users' contact lists on their servers, Apple issued a statement saying iOS apps accessing users’ contact lists will require explicit permission. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release,” an Apple spokesman told All Things Digital.

Low-Cost Androids to Conquer Africa, India, and China [REPORT]

Cheap Android handsets might reach a penetration rate of 80% of total smartphones in Africa, India, and China by 2015, claims a new report from In-Stat. Unit shipments for low-cost Android smartphones will be near 340 million worldwide in 2015, the report claims.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

This story originally published on Mashable here.