OS X Mountain Lion Apps Now Ask Permission to Access Contacts

Dustin Curtis points out that in the latest developer seed of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple now requires OS X Apps to get explicit permission to access your address book information.

The move mirrors recent changes made to iOS which will also ask the user for permission for an App to access their contact data. The change in policy came after it was revealed that some iOS apps were quietly collecting and transmitting customer address book data without their permission.

At the time, Apple issued this statement:

“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told AllThingsD. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

The policy now appears to extend to OS X Mountain Lion as well as iOS. Users can later manage these permissions in a new "Privacy" tab in System Preferences.