@chmars: As a user who is recently trying to understand Privacy Policies, can you please explain what is meant by "appropriate level" in there Privacy Policy:

The User agrees that such data may be processed in conjunction with third parties in Switzerland and other countries with an appropriate level of data and information privacy...

Also who is an example "third party". I wish to know this since I am working on consumer application myself that would need very strict Privacy guidelines. Anyone else may also answer, thanks.

@brainless: I am only a user of connex.io, i.e., I cannot give you any authoritative answers. I assume that third parties include for example hosting providers and cloud services. 'Appropriate' is probably based on the relatively strict data privacy regulations in Switzerland.

brainless, I am a Co-Founder of connex.io and as such have worked on our Privacy Policy. The shorter blue explanation on the side further explains what each clause is about.

To sync your address book we have to work with third parties (e.g. Google for Gmail) but we cannot be responsible for their data privacy procedures. We take all the steps necessary to keep your data private (encryption in transfer and while resting) and only sync data to services that you specifically connected and therefore gave us permission to sync with.

Basically we strongly believe that privacy is sacred when it comes to address book and our philosophy in this regard is: Your data is yours and yours alone. We only use the data you provide us with to provide you with the best possible address book. You can delete your data at any time and you can also export it in a standardized format (vCard).

Thanks @chmars and @mkuhn, that gives a much better picture.

Android, Gmail / Google Apps, Facebook, iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), LinkedIn, Mac OS X, Thunderbird, Twitter, XING and Yahoo! Mail.

If I understand correctly Connex.io syncs back changes from other address books to iOS and OSX address books. Doesn't that lead to problems if I also use iCloud (especially if synchronizing my iOS and OSX address books via iCloud between devices and at the same time also synchronizing via Connex.io)? Sounds like a lot of merge conflicts to me.

I don't want my address books sync'd. I want them displayed along side each other and contacts merged if they are the same person. My Facebook contacts are my friends, Twitter followers I don't really know and Gmail contacts are people I actually talk to!

@mkuhn: Are you having backend problems, or the first sync is really slow ? (Maybe it's a HN related effect?)

Every services are marked as "Waiting for first sync"

Camille, we are indeed "suffering" a little under the current load.

We are currently increasing our resources and working hard on making those syncs happen as soon as possible. Sorry that we have to ask for some patience.

I think our privacy policy is quite clear in that we do not sell data to anyone. The only thing we do is providing you with the best possible address book.

As a Swiss company we are under Swiss Privacy Law which is quite strict. We are registered with the appropriate data protection agency here and all our servers that handle any data are located in Switzerland.

I personally do not believe all startups are trying to sell private data. But if we assume some are, how do you tell the good one from the bad? Do we not use these applications then?

Or are there industry standards within reach of startups that can assure data security?