Comments on: PLEASE Don’t Give Websites Access to Your Address Books!

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By: Not a Smooth Landing (Page) « The Merchant's Companion

Not a Smooth Landing (Page) « The Merchant's Companion — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:19:43 +0000

[...] So what about giving the website direct access to your contact list to pull in email addresses? That’s gotta be pretty easy right? Well… people are getting more wary of this practice since it’s what a spammer would do and could give you a bad reputation. In general, giving a website full access to your address book is a no-no. [...]

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By: Dopp Juice » Blog Archive » A Conversation About the Social Graph

Dopp Juice » Blog Archive » A Conversation About the Social Graph — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:17:35 +0000

[...] networks SHOULD NOT ASK PEOPLE FOR THEIR GMAIL AND YAHOO MAIL LOGIN INFO. (i know, we’ve talked about this already, but it was nice to hear it on the panel from the Yahoo rep, too.) His reasons: our email address [...]

By: Dopp Juice » Blog Archive » Social Graph: You Might Need to Care About This

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:10:27 +0000

[...] sharing your “friends list” between your social networking websites without having to give out your email address book. This also means that signing up for a new social networking website won’t be such a [...]

By: Koan

Koan — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:10:30 +0000

Ah, sheesh, I would love to be able to say it can be as you say, Emma – oh, how I wish it were so, right now – but, idealist though I am, my head says “not now, it isn’t”.

Openness is great – until it isn’t. And then it’s a burden that might break one. And recovering from that burden can take a long, long time.

However, I’m enough a realist to also know that “nothing changes until we do” – and finding that middle-ground of openness and discretion, authenticity and security, pride and realism – it’s a daily struggle, and it’s a hard one.

Just my humble opinion, of course!

By: Emma McCreary

Emma McCreary — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:57:46 +0000

Hmm, I was really tickled when I first saw this feature. Of course I hit “select none” and carefully chose the few people I was actually on a friendship basis with and wanted to invite.

And I’ve definitely gotten the random invites from people I don’t really know but am just in their address book (i.e. hosting customers). I felt bad about ignoring them, but now I get it – they probably didn’t even check who all it was sending it to.

I don’t know. I get the issues you are saying, but I also see the future we’re going towards. I don’t think anything will really be all that private anymore. And I’m not sure that is a bad thing. Think about if everyone was telepathic. No one would be able to lie. It would be a completely different world.

Now, this of course is different because people can definitely lie online. So, I think there will be a learning period where some horrific violations will happen and then people will learn from them. But we have to, as a culture, make those mistakes before we can learn.

Then eventually privacy will become unnecessary because humans will evolve beyond judgment and violence (having learned to by making mistakes). And everyone will realize that everyone else is more complicated than they appear to be (just like them) and everyone will then be free to be more open.

But then again, I’m a hopeless utopianist. =)

By: sarah

sarah — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:07:32 +0000

Thanks, arse poetica! This is exactly why I wrote it. Really glad it helped.

By: arse poetica

arse poetica — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:14:00 +0000

Sarah, late to the game, but I wanted to drop a line to say thanks for a thought-provoking post. For some of us who enjoy these social networking tools but don’t live and breathe the tech (etc.) worlds and their considerations, it really helps to have a well argued post like this one. Many thanks. And I’ll be following you on Twitter soon. =)