Facebook & LinkedIn also ask for your email password, and they use it to spam. Whats interesting is that techcrunch never complains about it. Perhaps it is not wise to write harsh support letters to them ;-).
stupid user though.
Facebook and LinkedIn display a list of contacts from your email and allow you to select which ones to send invites (spam) to. And it is usually an optional step that can be skipped.
In my eyes, this is OK because it the page is clear about what they want and that it will email your contacts that you select.
Of course this is what I recall from when I signed up a while ago, so I could be wrong.
