A third-party contacts app you\u2019re not using may be handing out your home address to its users. In November, former Yahoo CEO and Google veteran Marissa Mayer and co-founder Enrique Mu\u00f1oz Torres introduced their newly rebranded startup Sunshine, and its first product, Sunshine Contacts. The new iOS app offers to organize your address book by handling duplicates and merges using AI technology, as well as fill in some of the missing bits of information by gathering data from the web \u2014 like LinkedIn profiles, for example.
\nBut some users were surprised to find they suddenly had home addresses for their contacts, too, including for those who were not already Sunshine users.
\nTechCrunch reached out to Sunshine to better understand the situation, given the potential privacy concerns.<\/p>\n
We understand there are several ways that users may encounter someone\u2019s home address in the Sunshine app. A user may already have the address on file in their phone\u2019s address book, of course, or they may have opted in to allow Sunshine to scan their inbox in order to extract information from email signature lines. This is a feature common to other personal CRM solutions, too, like Evercontact.
\nIn the event that someone had signed an email with their home address included in this field, that data could then be added to their contact card in the Sunshine app. In this case, the contact card is updated in the Sunshine Contacts app, which then syncs with your phone\u2019s address book. But this data is not distributed to any other app users.<\/p>\n
Image Credits: Sunshine<\/p>\n
The app also augments contact cards with information acquired by other means. For example, it may use the information you do have to complete missing fields \u2014 like adding a last name, when you had other data that indicated what someone\u2019s full name is, but hadn\u2019t completed filling out the card. The app may also be able to pull in data from a LinkedIn profile, if available.
\nFor home addresses, Sunshine is using the Whitepages API.
\nThe company confirmed to TechCrunch it\u2019s augmenting contact cards with home addresses under some circumstances, even if that contact is not a Sunshine Contacts user. Sunshine says it doesn\u2019t believe this to be any different from a user going to Google to look for someone\u2019s contact information on the web \u2014 it\u2019s just automating the process.
\nOf course, some would argue when you\u2019re talking about automating the collection of home addresses for hundreds or potentially thousands of users \u2014 depending on the size of your personal address book database \u2014 it\u2019s a bit different than if you went googling to find your aunt\u2019s address so you can mail a Christmas card or called your old college roommate to find out where to send their birthday gift.
\nHowever, Sunshine clarified to TechCrunch that it won\u2019t add the home address except in cases when it determines you have a personal connection to the contact in question.
\nHere, though, Sunshine enters a gray area where the app and its technology will try to figure out who you know well enough to need a home address.
\nBefore adding the address, Sunshine requires you to have the contact\u2019s phone number on file in your address book, not just their email. That would eliminate some people you only have a loose connection with through work, for instance. And it only updates with the home address if the partner API is able to associate that address with a phone number you have.<\/p>\n
Image Credits: Sunshine<\/p>\n
In addition, Sunshine says that it\u2019s generally able to understand the type of phone number you have on file \u2014 like if it\u2019s a residential or business line, or if it\u2019s a landline or mobile number. (It uses APIs to do this, similar to StrikeIron\u2019s though not that particular one.) It also knows who the phone number belongs to. Using this information and further context, the app tries to determine if a phone number is a personal or a professional number and it will try to understand your relationship with the person who owns that number.
\nIn practice, what this means is that if all the information you had on file for a contact was professional information \u2014 where they worked, a job title, a work email and a phone number, perhaps \u2014 then that person\u2019s contact card would not be updated to include their home address, too.
\nAnd because many people use their personal cell for work, Sunshine won\u2019t consider someone a \u201cpersonal\u201d relationship just because you have their mobile phone number. For example, if you had only a contact\u2019s name and a cell number, you wouldn\u2019t be able to use the app to get their home address.
\nThe result of all this automated analysis is that Sunshine, in theory, only updates contact cards with home addresses where it\u2019s determined there\u2019s a personal relationship.
\nThis, of course, doesn\u2019t take into account some scenarios like bad exes, stalking or a general desire for privacy. Arguably, there are times when someone may have a lot of personal information for a contact in their address book, but the contact in question would rather not have their home address distributed to that person.
\nThe only way to prevent this, presumably, would be to opt out at the source: Whitepages.com. (Once you have your profile URL from the Whitepages website, you can use this online form to have your information suppressed.)<\/p>\n
Image Credits: Sunshine<\/p>\n
The way the app functions raises questions about what is truly private information these days.
\nSunshine points out that people\u2019s home addresses are not as hidden from the world as they may think, which makes them fair game.
\nIt\u2019s true that our home addresses are often publicly available. Although it\u2019s been years since most of us have had a telephone directory dropped on our doorstep with phone and address listings for people in our city, home addresses today are relatively trivial to find when you know where to look online.
\nIn addition to public records \u2014 like voter registration databases \u2014 there are web-based people finders, too.
\nSunshine\u2019s partner, Whitepages.com, makes visitors pay for its data, but others like TruePeopleSearch.com don\u2019t have the same paywall. With someone\u2019s first and last name and city, its website provides access to someone\u2019s home address, prior addresses, cell phone, age and the names of family members and other close associates. (TruePeopleSearch is not a Sunshine partner, we should clarify.)<\/p>\n
Marissa Mayer\u2019s startup launches its first official product, Sunshine Contacts<\/p>\n
Even though this data is \u201cpublic,\u201d it\u2019s uncomfortable to see it casually distributed in an app, as that makes it even easier to get to than before.
\nPlus, after years of being burned by data breaches and data privacy scandals, people tend to be more protective of their personal information than before. And, had they been asked, many would probably decline to have their home addresses shared with Sunshine\u2019s user base. Generally speaking, people appreciate the courtesy of having someone come ask for a home address, when it\u2019s needed \u2014 they may not want an app creeping the web to find it and hand it out.
\nSunshine Contacts is in an invite-only beta in the U.S., so the company has time to reconsider how this feature is implemented based on user feedback before it becomes widely available.<\/p>\n