Privacy policy

setup-google-contacts — last updated 2 September 2026.

setup-google-contacts is a private tool with a single user: its author, who is also the owner of the only Google Accounts it ever accesses. This policy describes how it accesses, uses, stores and shares Google user data.

What data is accessed

The application requests these OAuth scopes:

• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly — to read the contacts on the operator's own account.
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.other.readonly — to read the “Other contacts” list on that account.
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/directory.readonly — to read the domain profiles in the operator's own Google Workspace organisation, which is where colleagues' work addresses live.
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts — requested only by the command that tidies contact groups, and not by any other operation. Every other command runs read-only.

The data seen is therefore the operator's own address book: names, nicknames, email addresses, phone numbers, organisations, group memberships and the other fields Google Contacts holds. No mail, calendar or file content is accessed, and no other person's account is ever read.

How the data is used

The data is used for three purposes, all of them on the operator's own instruction:

• Backup. A complete copy of the address book is written to a file on the operator's machine, so that an accidental deletion is recoverable.
• Tidying contact groups. The list of groups on the account is compared with a configuration file, the difference is shown, and on an explicit confirmation groups are created or deleted. Contacts themselves are never created, modified or deleted, and deleting a group leaves every contact in it intact.
• A small address book for the operator's own assistant. For a hand-picked list of people — chosen individually in a configuration file — the name, nicknames and email addresses are written to a text file that the operator's own AI assistant reads, so that an instruction like “write to Kate” resolves to the right address. Only those three kinds of field are included: no phone numbers, postal addresses or dates of birth are ever written to that file.

The data is not used for advertising, profiling or analytics, and it is not used to develop, train, retrain or improve any machine learning or artificial intelligence model, whether generalised or otherwise. Where the address book file is read by an assistant, it is read at the moment the operator asks a question, as reference material for that one answer.

How the data is stored

The application runs on hardware controlled by its operator. It stores, on those machines only:

• an OAuth token for the operator's own account, kept encrypted at rest in a private repository and readable only by the operating system user that runs the application;
• the backup copy of the address book, in a private repository;
• the small hand-picked address book described above, in the operator's own private notes.

How the data is shared

Google user data is not sold, and is not transferred to anyone. It does not leave the operator's own machines except in requests back to Google's own APIs. There is no server operated for other people, no analytics provider and no third-party recipient of any kind.

Retention and deletion

The operator can revoke the application's access at any time from Google Account permissions, which immediately ends all access. The locally stored token, backup files and address book file can each be deleted by removing them; doing so leaves no copy of any Google user data anywhere.

Limited Use

Use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Contact

Questions about this policy: jpolcar@gmail.com