Making a prediction:
When you wake up tomorrow morning, the front page will be filled with stories like these about every type of app you can think of. It will only get worse from here.
Worse is an interesting choice of words .... if a bunch of companies get shamed into respecting people's privacy then that's great, and if it gets the ball rolling and triggers the wrath of app stores ... that's even better.
If companies could get shamed into doing anything, the world would be a different place. But to a company there is no such thing as shame, there is only the fear that public reaction will negatively impact their bottom line.
I have little doubt. My only question/interest is - what is the most high-profile and also the most odd-ball app/company that will be found to have done this.
I am thinking of precise reasons why these services want the e-mail addresses in the first place. Is it to create a social network graph of the email addresses? Does this mean that all of these small services have a social graph? That doesn't seem so bad given that most people have already given that to one very large institution.
Ah. right. Probably shows I'm still practicing abstinence i.e. no smart phone with 3G plan yet. Still seems its a lot less to be concerned about in comparison to what other organizations own. I suppose the sneaky under the hood part is what's jarring.