Legality of apps looking at your contact lists

[gadstamut]

I have a legal query or maybe just a paranoid tin foil hat one. Seeing as nowadays almost every app asks for access to your contact book, how does this relate to the right of privacy of your contacts. For me personally I only give my number out to people who I want. Forming a trust bond with that person that they will not give out my number to anyone else. Granted getting your friends to sign a contract to not pass on this personnel piece of information may be a little difficult. Lets go with an assumed agreement between friends. Now if one friend does download an app that lets say asks for permission to contacts and then uses that information without the original parties permission who is responsible for the breech, in legal terms if that information gets used / stored for market research PPI calls and so forth.

If you make it clear to the friend whom you give the phone number to, that in no way do you want the number given out to anyone else is it their responsibility and the breech lie with them.

Alternatively is it a better Idea to fill you phone book full of premium line numbers as well as MP's numbers. So when your contacts book is passed on they get to annoy your local MP's and hopefully charged money for the premium lines.

This is my though for today.

[mrdude]

A lot of apps use your contacts for the app to work - such as whatsapp, that uses your contacts so you can message or call them. Email apps also require access to it as your contact address book can store email addresses. Some apps also want to message you - such as some satnav apps - to let you know about traffic accidents. If an app is asking for access - it's generally needed for that app to work properly.

[davorp]

An app can work properly without snooping into contacts, they just chose to make it that way deliberately, so they can use it for target ads, selling data to third parties and who knows what else.