Good move by Apple - this is something that should be handled by the OS. People sometimes criticizes Apple's controlling nature, but this is one example where it will benefit people in a big way when you have people installing so many Apps on their phones and trying to make sure that nothing nefarious gets through. All of these App developers and everybody in Silicon Valley acts as if they're upstanding and innocent but the reality is that some of the nicest sounding companies are some of the most sneaky when it comes to these privacy issues. They try and get more data because that is how the digital economy operates. Everybody talks about Facebook privacy issues, but they're really the tip of the iceberg. Everybody is starting to be aware of the issues that are inherent with Facebook and the privacy issues that you need to watch out for on there. The bigger issues come from trusted companies that try and get this data (see Path's incident from a few months back for instance, they had a reputation for privacy when the reality was opposite) but these companies need to be more careful about these types of issues. Look at http://www.dirtyphonebook.com and other sites that leak out this personal data, look at how Google makes this easily accessible to anybody that wants it. That's not good for the web. This is something that needs to be built into the operating system. Apple always gets a lot of heat for various issues where they try and control and direct the user experience, but I think its in their best interest to nip this in the bud right away and not allow API access to this personal data without permission.