HN user
>We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts
Better would have been 'we are sorry we misused your phone contacts', rather than trying to make the users responsible by invoking their feelings.
Aside: interesting how the concept of theft seems meaningless when applied to copyrighted material, but meaningful when applied to private data.
> the absolute best defense against these sorts of situations is just not to be a douche, which isn't very hard
...unless one is already a douche, in which case it might be very hard.
The behavior of insulting people for no reason, like bullying generally, seems to transmitted via anti-rational memes.
Which means that the people who engage in it don't understand why they do so; they just know that it gives them some sort of psychological relief.