Social networking sites, applications and tools like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon and Kosmix are growing geometrically these days, and many people are finding them both fun and useful. But not all of them are created equal. I was "friended" by someone via the social networking site Netlog, and when I checked it out, I found an old acquaintance who had issued this warning on her personal profile:
"Netlog stole all my addresses from my address book and sent message to all of them!! If that is why you are here I recommend you do not sign up for Netlog or the same could happen to you! I am so sorry for any problem this may have caused you. I did not realize what was happening. I am leaving this message for those of you who came here because of me. Your friend Ann (Mix)."
Nothing like the bones of those foolhearty explorers who came before to warn away others who might crash upon the same rocks. Thanks, Ann.
I wonder if that was Netlog's doing or a virus problem?
ReplyDeleteFetching e-mail addresses from various other services' address books happens through the sign-up process, whereby an unsuspecting user is asked to enter his/her user names and passwords for his/her other services that s/he uses, which is how Netlog subsequently and automatically acquires all the addresses.
ReplyDeleteAll reputable services (such as those from Google and Microsoft) strongly advise in their terms of service documents and elsewhere for their users not to divulge their user names and passwords to others.
The only current Wikipedia entry containing information about the sign-up process was in the Russian Wikipedia.