How and Why Pocket for Android Asks for the Contacts Permission

We’ve always prided ourselves in having a strong privacy policy while being as transparent as possible because our user’s privacy is incredibly important to us. This article details how Pocket uses (and more importantly, how it doesn’t use) the Contacts permission. For details on other permissions see How Pocket uses Android Permissions.

How does Pocket use this permission?

When looking for friends to follow on Pocket, your contacts will only be used to find your friends. Their email addresses will not be uploaded or stored by Pocket. You’ll be able to choose who you’d like to follow after connecting.

If you decide to let Pocket check your address book for matching Pocket accounts to follow, your contacts list will be checked to see if anyone is already on Pocket. This makes it easy to follow people you know on Pocket to see their recommendations.

Aside from this use, the Read Contacts permission is not used for any other purpose, and as a result, Pocket does not access your calls, messages, or communication history.

Does Pocket collect or save my list of contacts?

Your contact database is only accessed locally on your device. No copy is ever made. This means that your private contact database and history is never transmitted to or stored by Pocket.

Do you share this information with third parties?

We do not share any private or personal information unless you expressly request that we do so.

Can you make the permission optional?

Starting with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), you can choose which permissions to allow, and which you’d like to disable in Pocket. Therefore, you can choose to disable this permission.

For earlier versions of Android, however, permissions are granted at the time of installation or update. This means that it’s sadly not possible to make certain permissions optional if you’re running Android 5 or earlier.

We’re very excited that Android 6.0 and greater introduces more flexibility with permissions, and encourage you to update your device if possible.

For more, please view Pocket’s Privacy Policy: http://getpocket.com/privacy

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about privacy, please reach out to us at privacy@getpocket.com