What does Microsoft do with my contacts list?

I was informed that Microsoft wants to have access to my contacts list.

I just went through this exercise again, because I'm sure there's a misunderstanding afoot. I see the following:

The email addresses in your profile ≠ your contacts list

Your profile is accessible at profile.live.com. There may be more than one address recorded there for you, but not for anyone else. Your contacts list is at contacts.live.com, and you haven't given permission for anyone else to access that.

¡Firedog, I am probably seeming to be impolite because I haven't shown complete satisfaction with your answer, but are you sure that when that outside company uses the vocabulary "profile" they are using it in the same sense as you, a Microsoft employee, are using it?

I know that it seems I am being way too particular about defining what all these uses of vocabulary mean, but that company running that email app is not Microsoft, so I ask again, as a Microsoft employee, can you assure us that that company Microsoft contracted to do this job is following the rules as you are defining them here?

We are happy they removed the desire to access our contacts list, but I just wish to be sure I understand what they mean by profile.

And, yes, possibly this post should have gone up before the one just above this one.

But, to be truthful, Hans surprised me with his observation and I started this session from his post by creating  that side-by-side image.

EDIT:

Because of something that happened in another thread I have just come to realize I may have erred in thinking a "Community Moderator" is a Microsoft employee.  Just a "Forum Moderator" is, right?  Sorry about that, as Max used to say.

... are you sure that when that outside company uses the vocabulary "profile" they are using it in the same sense as you, a Microsoft employee, are using it?

I don't work for Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter. Microsoft employees posting in these forums are supposed to have a   badge, although most of the blue badgers you come across will not be employees but contractors of one sort or another. So no, I'm not sure of anything at all.

... can you assure us that that company Microsoft contracted to do this job is following the rules as you are defining them here?

No - for the same reason.

However, I have on occasion had reason to grant permission to access my Microsoft Account profile (then known as Windows Live ID) to vendors of various types. In each case, the consent form was as far as I remember very similar to the one in the first image above, indicating that this was a standard form that came with the API.

I am sure, though, that employees of a company like Catalysis would need some very compelling reason to hazard their future by misusing the trust that Microsoft and users like you place in them by accepting the terms of this function. Why don't you ask them what use they make of your data? It seems fairly clear that MSFT aren't going to comment in this thread.

Yes, I realized my mistake when I was dealing with one of those with that blue MICROSOFT badge thingy.  Except that isn't going very well and my days may be numbered around here.

Nevertheless, I am really having a hard time wrapping my poor, old, not too well-functioning brain around a company that won't answers questions like that which I first posted here in February.

I mean, how can it be that a company feels so powerful that they can ignore such questions.

Yes, going to that other company is an option, but it all started right here at this company.

In addition, it seems such a normal practice that this sort of behaviour doesn't bother most people anymore.

You know, it's funny that it was the politicians that made all this possible back in 1992 or '93, yet the law of the land doesn't seem to properly apply to so many things on the Net.  And if you start talking about getting the law of land involved these companies start to scream.  Or threaten to ban you.

This is the company that set that app stuff up and it is for the benefit of this company, so I think I have a right to ask about things like that contact list business.  That is pretty serious stuff, they wanting to access my contact list.  But they just ignore the request for clarification.  Or maybe even worse, they don't even come here to see questions like this being posted.

Something very, very basic is not right.

And normally we have seen in history that when something really basic starts to go adrift in a nation there is some force that comes along and puts things right.  So the 102nd Congress released ARPA and the National Science Foundation from an obligation to limit the use of the "Net" and maybe another Congress not too far into the future has to let these companies know that our basic rights to privacy need to be better protected here on this Net.

@HFM47 ,

From reading here and elsewhere I'm now confident the app requirement to Access your email addresses is my email address(es) only (and not my gender, birthday, location etc.)

Thank you again for your persistence with this. I will not speculate why the requirements changed. ;-)

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Hans