Website importing contacts from gmail, yahoo, aol, hotmail. Legal? Do I need a partnership?

Many web sites, like linkedin, allow users to import contacts from their personal email accounts for the purposes of inviting new users as well as checking if someone is already an existing user on the specific network.





In the case of linkedin, users can simply type (into linkedin) their username and password and their contacts are loaded for them to utilize. I reckon that they're importing names and addressed directly from the sent and contact folders of each email account.





My question is --- is this legal to do this without having a formal partnership with these mail providers?





For my commercial web site, I'm considering putting in place this option but I'm very curious if I could do this without having any relationship or association with mail providers.





Any help, comment, or advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Website importing contacts from gmail, yahoo, aol, hotmail. Legal? Do I need a partnership?
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