You're right, but the reason they're doing this is less conspiratorial than you suggest... it's just compliance for the California Consumer Privacy Act coming into effect in 2020.

From https://privacylaw.proskauer.com/2018/07/articles/data-priva..., the first major provision is:

> 1. the right to know, through a general privacy policy and with more specifics available upon request, what personal information a business has collected about them, where it was sourced from, what it is being used for, whether it is being disclosed or sold, and to whom it is being disclosed or sold;

The UI mocks in the article are literally a checklist of each of these items.

This seems like a way to offload the blame onto the uploader, rather than the system that continually asks for contacts.