LinkedIn and Facebook accessing my OSX Address Book, Security Problems

[minvoyager]

It's becoming clear to me that apps such as LinkedIn and Facebook must have gained access to my Mac/OSX/iOS iCloud Address Book - because they're suggesting friends/contacts of people who I've had only brief communications with, but their details are in my address book.

What worries me most is -- how much of my OSX/iCloud address book have these corporations downloaded to their records. I can sort of accept if they get names off my address book. That's bad enough. But what if they also downloaded the "Notes" portion of my Address Book that could contain confidential information, even credit card details and bank passwords.

Surely, when we place data into iCloud - which includes the OSX/iOS Address Book, the Apple customer (me and you) assumes that our information is confidential. That assumption, of course, is what we assume when we click that we have (not really) read those ridiculously long EULA's which we have to.

I am concerned, particularly with the note section of OSX Address Book, if that contained confidential information, and people like Facebook and LinkedIn got hold of that.

 

[maflynn]

I'd say close out the accounts if you're worried about social media's ability to gain access to your information. Personally, I've never allowed Facebook's access to my contacts. Its prompted me once or so and I since then it hasn't. I also only keep a minimum amount of information about me, i.e,, I don't have a full bio defined, nor do I have my cell phone registered and I don't use FB's messenger.

 

[C DM]

It's also a question of how much Apple allows to be shared from these places, like Contacts. It's quite likely they don't allow access to all sections, like notes for example. Would probably take some digging in their developer documentation to figure that out.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Apps like that request permission and if you don't give it I don't think they're obtaining it.

What you might be seeing is the result of other people giving access to their contacts. LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty tricky in how they can figure out who you might know by information obtained from people you do know.