Intent to Experiment: Contact API

[Peter Beverloo]

Contact emails

fin...@chromium.org, pe...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/beverloo/contact-api

Summary

Allows websites to request the names, e-mail addresses and/or phone numbers of the contacts available on the user's device. Doing so requires a user gesture, upon which the user must explicitly select information about which contacts is to be shared.

This data is not shared directly. Instead, a contact picker will be shown to the user in which they have to select which, if any, data to share with the website. The picker is attributed to the origin, and we visually indicate the data that is to be shared. This flow must be repeated each time the website wants access to contact information: no persistent access is granted.

This obviously is a more powerful feature making available sensitive information to the website. The current user interface is clear, but we need more experience to know whether it's clear enough. Running an Origin Trial will help in this, and we've got a number of partners lined up who are interested in experimenting this API and providing feedback.

Link to “Intent to Implement” blink-dev discussion

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/blink-dev/brKChSa9_d0/discussion

Goals for experimentation

• Is the information made available through the API sufficient to satisfy the use-cases? (Primarily interested in developer feedback.)
• Does the user interface for the picker clearly indicate what data is going to be shared? (Primarily interested in user feedback.)

Experimental timeline

M73 - M75

Any risks from changing the API mid-experiment?

The API is flexible enough to support a picker model, which we chose to pursue, as well as other models and data sources.

Any risks when the experiment finishes?

None.

Will this feature be supported on all five Blink platforms supported by Origin Trials (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and Android)?

No. This feature is specific to Android, where the problem is significantly more severe than on other platforms. Additional feedback is necessary to understand what the right solution is for the other platforms, given that there may not always be a device-canonical contact source available.

Link to entry on the feature dashboard

https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6511327140904960

[Rick Byers]

LGTM to experiment.

Given the potential privacy implications, I assume this feature will need to go through Chrome Launch Review (even for the OT - since anyone can sign up for a token).

Personally I'm quite happy with this trade-off for this feature. We keep hearing that the lack of contacts access as a key reason developers prefer native mobile apps over PWAs, but this design sounds like it can live up to user's expectations of the web in terms of putting them in control over who, when and what information is shared.

Rick

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[Joe Medley]

Peter,

Do you have a tracking bug for this?

Joe

Joe Medley | Technical Writer, Chrome DevRel | jme...@google.com | 816-678-7195

If an API's not documented it doesn't exist.

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[Mike West]

When you have a tracking bug, please CC +Balazs Engedy and +Martin Šrámek who can delegate reviews of the permission and privacy model, respectively. A picker UX seems like a pretty good starting point, and I look forward to working through the details with y'all.

-mike

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[Balazs Engedy]

Once you have the tracking bug, could you please also make sure to attach a screencast or some screenshots that demonstrate what the UX will look like?

[Peter Beverloo]

Hi folks - based on the above, as well as further discussions we've had within the team, we've now found a shared understanding of MVP and I'd like to ask the API OWNERS for approval to go ahead with an Origin Trial for the Contact Picker.

Amendments to summary

e have decided to not launch the ability for users to select all their contacts given the likelihood of this being misused. Users are still able to search through their contacts and select multiple contacts to be returned, and have further gained the ability to filter the data types that will be shared with the website. Users deciding to withhold certain information will be invisible to the developer, other than the data being absent of course.

Furthermore, a specification for this feature is now available, and it has been accepted by the WICG:

https://wicg.github.io/contact-api/spec/

Experimental timeline

M77 - M80

Launch bug

https://crbug.com/979207

Thanks,

Peter

[Chris Harrelson]

Hi,

Are you saying that you have not yet started any experiment, and plan to do so in M77-80? If so, LGTM!

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[Peter Beverloo]

That's correct. Thank you! We'll proceed once all the launch reviews have been signed off on, and I'll update here accordingly.

Thanks,

Peter