Don’t install the iPhone app iDrive Lite if you value the privacy of your contact list. Avi Muchnick, one of the developers behind the free, consumer-friendly online graphics suite Aviary, used iDrive to backup his Gmail contact list when switching to a new phone. The next day, he awoke to discover that iDrive’s parent company, Pro Softnet Corp, had spammed every single entry in his contact list without his permission.

On his blog post about the event, he describes how Pro Softnet Corp brushed him off when he called to complain:

called iDrive’s parent company Pro Softnet Corp and their operator kept pushing me to voicemail when I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. I have a feeling I’m not the first to call in and complain.

After SkokieGuy’s comment below, we headed to the iDrive Lite website (the company provides a link on the iTunes App Store info page) to look for any information about contact scraping. We found none. We checked out their privacy policy and it doesn’t address this practice at all. Here’s their Terms of Usage for all iDrive products, but again we couldn’t find any assertion of their right to access your contacts and spam them.

“iDrive spammed my Gmail contacts” [Aviary.com]

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