A subtle change to the iPhone’s contact-sharing permissions
Apple’s upcoming iOS 18 will let users grant apps access to only selected contacts instead of their entire address book, aiming to curb how social and messaging apps “slurp” contact data to build social graphs and fuel growth. Commenters broadly welcome this as a long-overdue privacy and security improvement, especially against dark patterns and shadow profiles, though some note it may entrench incumbents and slightly degrade usability for legitimate apps like email or messaging clients. There is also debate over whether Apple unfairly advantages its own apps by not subjecting them to the same permission prompts, and over how much such OS-level changes can really protect users when friends and other apps still share data extensively.
Overall sentiment toward Apple’s new contacts permissions
- Majority view: change is long-overdue, strongly pro-privacy, especially against apps that “slurp” entire address books and spam or data-mine contacts.
- Many see it as closing an obvious “vulnerability” that enabled aggressive growth hacks by social apps.
- Some celebrate that this may kill contact-harvesting business models; “if your startup depends on this, it shouldn’t exist.”
Impact on social and communication apps
- Critics of the change argue it “pulls up the ladder” for new social apps that relied on rapid bootstrapping via contacts, making it harder to challenge incumbents.
- Others counter that the old model caused huge societal and privacy harms; if we want different kinds of social networks, we need different rules.
- Concern that 3rd-party email/messaging clients will now have worse UX (missing names, incomplete address books) while Apple’s own apps stay seamless.
Dark patterns, spam, and shadow profiles
- Widespread agreement that many successful social apps grew by dark patterns: hijacking contact lists, sending mass invites, and building shadow profiles, including of non-users.
- Several anecdotes about LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, WhatsApp, and others repeatedly nagging for contacts or microphone access, or coercing full sharing via degraded UX.
Granularity, fake data, and technical alternatives
- Positive comparisons to existing granular photo permissions; desire for even finer controls:
- Per-contact and per-field (e.g., share phone but not birthday).
- Rate-limited contact lookup APIs and “circles”/groups to bulk-share subsets.
- OS-level “scopes” that make apps believe they have full access while actually limiting data.
- Some suggest fake or synthetic contacts as a defensive measure; others warn this could harm random real people if not carefully designed.
Platform power and Apple’s role
- Debate over whether Apple is genuinely acting for privacy or entrenching its own apps by avoiding similar prompts for first-party services.
- Some argue integrated suites (Contacts + Messages + Mail) naturally share data; others want strict sandboxing even between first-party apps.
- General cynicism that Apple tolerated full-contact slurping for many years, only now tightening controls.