[Maarten88]

Yes, LinkedIn is another offender that I'm sure also does this, even more aggressively than Facebook. They blatantly try to download your contact list by directly asking your email password to build shadow profiles and propose new contacts.

And I guess WhatsApp probably also used the same practice to grow their network, using contact lists extracted from phones.

As I understand it, these practices are simply illegal in the EU and always were. Regrettably, the billions that were made this way (mostly by US companies) will probably never be returned.

[peteretep]

    > And I guess WhatsApp probably also used the same
    > practice to grow their network

... how would that work? I've never seen WhatsApp offer to let me message someone who didn't have an account.

[brazzledazzle]

I think the idea of a shadow account is that you build the information on the person (from disparate data points, like phone contacts) and their connections. Then when they sign up they are presented with a list of people that have them in their contacts. From a UX perspective it can be nice but I can definitely see the privacy concerns.

[AJ007]

Have you seen WhatsApp contacts show up as suggested friends in Facebook?