Yes, I am rather uncomfortable with putting any IM contacts into the N900 address book because of this revelation, so I'll probably be looking for another app to handle IM on it if isn't resolved.

I definitely want to IM on the N900 - so that clients think I'm a really hard worker because I'll be always online . But this issue, I understand how it's arisen, but it's very concerning.

The "warning" isn't informative enough, among other things. When you get a warning that it'll delete all contacts, it's not obvious what it means because there are several different things that could mean.

It's a mistake, of course, but natural to hope it's not too dangerous - for the simple reason that adding IM contacts and removing IM contacts from the phone list should be complementary operations - that is, do the opposite of each other.

If you remove an IM contact from your phone's contact list, it doesn't usually mean you want to remove your connection to them from your IM account. It just means (I would normally expect) that you don't want it in your phone's contact list any more.

Btw, does anyone know a way to collect all IM contacts from all different services used and back them up in a safe place, regularly? With ability to restore individually and all together? By that I mean not having to do a long-winded web operation with umpteen different web sites to make a backup.