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Where the article enumerates the reasons one might not want to share one's entire address book, it leaves out the one most important to me. If I allow an app ac
by mcculley 11y ago
Where the article enumerates the reasons one might not want to share one's entire address book, it leaves out the one most important to me. If I allow an app access to my entire address book, it can see atrributes on an entry that I feel I should not leak such as birthdate and home physical address. Address books need a finer grained way to express such access control. Even when sharing a contact with a third person and not a service, I might not want to share the entire address book entry for a person.
- dalbin 11y agoIn iOS, you can present a contact picker and the app will only get access to the user final selection (a contact or a contact property). https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/ContactsUI/Reference/CNContactPickerViewController_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/cl/CNContactPickerViewController https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...
- mcculley 11y agoInteresting. I was aware that this new API exists. I've not seen an app use it yet. I was not aware it could narrow the selection down to just a single contact property. The documentation does not make that clear. Nevertheless, apps like Facebook aren't going to use this as they want the whole address book and not a single person.
- ATsch 11y agoIIRC android has this too, it's just that it is seldomly used on both platforms because it is inconvinient (imagine having to select all contacts and search from them individually in e.g. WhatsApp) and means the app can not mine your data.
- rvanmil 11y agoI often see people, including myself, using the "note" field in their address book for additional and often private data. Am I correct to assume this data is also available to apps accessing the address book?
- naveen99 11y agoI have moved to a git tracked contacts folder with a text (.org) file for each contact. Works for bookmarks, todo lists also. Easy to sync, private by defaulT.
- mcculley 11y agoMy understanding of the API in iOS is that once the user has granted access to the "Address Book", the app can read every entry in there.