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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

With the exception of Signal, I never give apps access to my contacts. If you think that's paranoid, remember how apps like LinkedIn used this kind of information in the past[1]. Thankfully on iOS apps almost always work without contact access (is this mandated by App Store rules?).

It's not clear from the article if the app just asks for access to contacts or requires it, but if you can't make your Voip app work without accessing my contact list, I don't want to use it.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/21/4756212/linkedin-accused-...

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While I don't doubt that you never give apps access to your contacts, how many apps do you use as _dialers_?

iOS doesn't even let you change the dialer.

I have Google voice on my iPhone. Google voice calls show up in my "Recents" in the Phone app. When I click them, the call is started in Google Voice.

That feels like changing the dialer, even if it's technically not.

Third party dialing apps integrate with contacts, the dialer, your call history etc.

Absolutely the same here. WhatsApp is a nightmare to use without contacts, but I don't care, they are not having my contacts.

Facebook wouldn't have paid billions for just a messaging app. What they really paid for is people's social graphs.

I'm sure they are making money off of any data they can, but their actual strategy was pretty clearly buying potential competitors to ensure the company continued to dominate the market even if the facebook site began to lose users: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/08/...

To be fair, whatsapp is a messaging app. Almost everybody who uses it, gives it contacts access, because it is absolutely required for that core functionality. It would be horrible to use if I couldn't search my contacts within the app. Or of incoming messages didn't get tagged based on my contacts.

Seems like a lost fight to me, if a few friends have these apps your social web is already known to a great extent anyway

It is, but it's worth being a pain in this respect because it makes it obvious we need a way to limit which contacts an app can see similar to how you can limit photos for an app.

Yep. I was just looking at a voicemail / spam blocking one last night and their privacy policy said they use / share and contacts you upload (aka that they upload). The average person has no idea that’s happening.

there are multiple apps i have encountered that would not let you type in a phone number to start a chat. you HAVE to give contact access and have whatever number you wanted to chat with saved as a contact

> you HAVE to give contact access...

Some apps require this, but the Android API allows apps to access very specific Contact information without having full access to all Contact data.

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