[Silhouette]

I'm giving up on this thread now. The endless downvotes instead of replies and people missing the point are just disheartening.

One more time, for the record: Your friend trusted you with their personal data, not Google. You may not personally have a problem with sharing your own personal data with Google, but not everyone is like you, and some people do. That doesn't mean they have a problem with sharing the data with you in the first place or that it was somehow unreasonable of them to give it to you.

I really can't understand why so few people in this discussion seem to understand the distinction. We have multiple Acts of Parliament on the subject here in the UK and an entire government department whose primary responsibility is enforcing the rules, so I'm clearly not the only one who gets it or thinks it's important. Maybe it's a cultural/generational thing, and the average person on HN just sees the world differently or something. Then again, the average person on HN today downvotes rather than replying if they disagree, based on my experience in this discussion and what's happened to several other people in other discussions I've been following, so things have obviously gone way downhill.

[roldon332]

You really expect every one of your contacts to let you know before the buy an Android cell phone, or sign up for gmail or call you on google voice? What if one of your contacts doesn't trust ANY company other than Google? Using your logic, you shouldn't contact them on anything other than Google services.

[calloc]

Unfortunately I am unable to remember any and all of my friends contact information. I store it somewhere for easy retrieval when I need it.

[wnight]

Your phone number and email address were never meant to be secret. That only provides security by obscurity and leads to exactly this problem - you, a user, being upset when the security you were led to expect doesn't align with reality.

If you wish to not receive certain communications the way to do this is by screening incoming connections/contents. This works, unlike secrets.

Now, understanding that what you wanted to do (keep an email address secret) is a bad idea - it won't do what you want, you can see why those who understand don't care about this "privacy" - it isn't.

Claiming to authorize your email address being shared with CompanyX but not CompanyY is like saying "Here's my phone number, I'm only lettingVerizon subscribers know it, to keep AT&T from snooping on which of their users calls me." It's just nonsensical.