Sharing your contacts with apps? Read this first!

Many apps ask for—or even require—sharing your contacts with them. While this helps these apps grow their network by making it easier for users to find and add each other, it also raises privacy concerns. Sharing all of your contacts' private info without their explicit consent is problematic.

Apple should provide a way to filter what data fields are shared when you share your contacts. For example, users could choose to share only names and email addresses, filtering out home addresses and notes that might include sensitive data. Until Apple implements this, there's not much we can do if we want to use apps that require sharing our contacts. However, there's one thing we can do to minimize what gets shared.

Many people use the notes field to enter additional info about a contact. This might include names of that person’s spouse, children, and pets, their birthdays, and possibly more sensitive data such as notes about meetings or encounters, details about that person’s background, or even SSNs or health info of family members. Here’s a way to move these notes out of the Contacts database so it’s not shared externally.

I'm a Mac user, and these steps are specific to Mac and macOS.

?? CAUTION: The following steps require technical proficiency with creating and running scripts, and familiarity with opening and using Mac applications, including Contacts, Notes, and Script Editor. While I successfully completed these steps on my Mac, your results may vary, and I am not responsible for any data loss or corruption you may experience. If you follow these steps exactly, you will have a backup archive of all your contacts that you can use to restore your contacts to their original state. Proceed at your own risk!

I asked ChatGPT how to export all notes from my Contacts app database to the Notes app, and then delete those notes from the Contacts app. This is what it gave me (summarized):

Step 1: Export an archive of all contacts:

1. Go to File > Export > Contacts Archive...

2. Save the archive file to a safe location.

Step 2: Create a smart list for contacts with notes:

1. Go to File > New Smart List...

2. Name the list "Contacts with Notes".

3. Set the condition to "Note" "is set" to filter contacts with notes.

4. Click OK to create a smart list that contains all contacts with notes.

Step 3: Copy contact notes to the Notes app:

1. Launch Script Editor.

2. Create a new script and paste the following code into it:

tell application "Contacts"
    set theGroup to group "Contacts with Notes"
    set contactsList to people in theGroup
end tell

tell application "Notes"
    set theNotebook to make new folder with properties {name:"Contacts Notes"} -- Creates a new folder in Notes
end tell

repeat with aContact in contactsList
    tell application "Contacts"
        set contactName to name of aContact
        set contactNote to note of aContact
    end tell
    
    if contactNote is not missing value then
        tell application "Notes"
            set newNote to make new note at theNotebook with properties {name:contactName, body:contactNote}
        end tell
    end if
end repeat        

This script does the following:

• Fetches all contacts from the "Contacts with Notes" group.
• Creates a new folder in the Notes app called "Contacts Notes".
• Iterates through each contact, retrieves their name and note, and creates a new note in the "Contacts Notes" folder with the contact's name as the title and their note as the content.

3. Click the Run button in the Script Editor to execute the script.

4. Verify the results in the Notes app. You should see a "Contacts Notes" folder with separate notes for each contact.

5. Optionally save this script, such as to the same location where you saved your contacts archive.

Step 4: Delete contact notes from the Contacts app database:

If you only have a few contacts with notes, it might be easier to just manually delete those notes. If you have a large number of contacts, you can automate this process:

1. Launch Script Editor.

2. Create a new script and paste the following code into it:

tell application "Contacts"
    set theGroup to group "Contacts with Notes"
    repeat with thePerson in people in theGroup
        if (note of thePerson) is not missing value then
            set note of thePerson to ""
        end if
    end repeat
    save
end tell        

This script deletes the notes from the "Contacts with Notes" smart list you created in Step 2.

3. Click the Run button in the Script Editor to execute the script.

4. Verify the results in the Contacts app. You should still see the same contacts in your "Contacts with Notes" smart list, however they should no longer contain any text in the notes section. They will still appear in the smart list because the notes are set to an empty string.

5. Optionally save this script, such as to the same location where you saved your contacts archive.

?? After performing these steps, verify on your phone or device that you're sharing contacts from that these changes have synced to that device. This process typically only takes a few seconds.

Conclusion

By performing these steps, you can prevent sharing sensitive information you've added to your contacts' notes before sharing them with apps that request or require access. If you've already given an app access to your contacts, many apps also offer a way to delete that data from their servers. Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to provide an example for a specific app, such as WhatsApp.

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