eran sent you a friend request on Yaari...

[Liam Proven]

On 05/01/2008, Nils Kassube <kassube at gmx.net> wrote:
> Liam Proven wrote:
> > Arguably that's an admirable POV from a security perspective, but I
> > confess, I allowed my half-a-dozen social networking sites one-time
> > access to all my webmail accounts so they could tell me who there was
> > that I already knew that was on the network. It's a common thing.
> > However, I stick to the more reputable sites, like LinkedIn, Facebook,
> > Myspace and Orkut; they've done nothing wrong, at least to me.
>
> That seems really weird to me. And I don't mean you personally but all
> people on these social networking sites who give away account details.
> There is no site on the internet reputable enough to get access to any of
> my email accounts. Am I suffering from paranoia? I don't think so. When I
> signed up for any of my email accounts, there was an information telling
> me that I should not give away the password for the account - and even
> the provider would never ask for the password by email or phone. Is that
> not a standard?
>
> Would you give me access to your email account? I hope not. You don't know
> me. You only know there is someone out there with a certain email address
> who claims to have a certain name. And if you don't give me access to
> your email account, why is ANY social networking site more trustworthy
> than me? Do you know those who wrote the software for those sites? Or
> those who operate the sites?
>
> Any site who asks for account details is absolutely NOT trustworthy.
> Nobody knows, if during the one-time access to an email account all
> available mail folders are copied for data mining purposes. Of course
> there are far better ways to find out if others you know are on the
> network. The site should ask for a list of names and / or email
> addresses. Then you have control of the list you give away, so the chance
> of embarrassment is much smaller.

Paranoia is fine and in moderation it's not a bad thing, but if you
don't trust anyone, then you shouldn't be using the Internet! If you
don't trust websites, then don't use webmail. If you don't trust
social networking sites, then don't use them.

I trust Gmail not to pretend to be me, sell my account details - not
that they're worth much - or otherwise misbehave with the data I've
given them. But that's not much; nothing critical is in there. By the
same token, I trust Facebook and so on as well.

Either you make some basic checks and then believe them - that a large
reputable company is what it says and does what it and everyone else
says it does - or you don't.

If you don't, then why do you trust Canonical not to embed spyware in
Ubuntu? Why do you trust Ubuntu? If you don't trust anyone with your
Hotmail details, why did you trust Hotmail with them?

It's not like I'm paying for any of these services. I have Hotmail,
Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc.
etc. etc. I didn't pay a penny for any of them, they don't have my
bank or credit card details or anything else. I don't even see the
adverts they run; I block them all.

Now, eBay, I pay. I sell a lot of stuff on there, and buy a little. I
pay eBay for both these services. So eBay have some of my bank
details. Thus *nobody* gets my eBay account details. And none of the
social networking sites get the login details for the email account
that I operate eBay through, either! And that is an account I don't
trust to webmail. I pay for the account I use for that.

It is all a matter of tracking what info you give to whom, thinking
about it and being sensible. Just being paranoid and trying not to
give anything to anyone does not work. You must think about it, and
make some decisions.

If someone can't be bothered to do that, then either [a] they
shouldn't use the Web  and Internet at all and [b] they can go right
ahead and use it and expect to get ripped off some time. They deserve
it.

We are thinking, sentient, rational animals, with memories and the
ability to learn. Use 'em or lose 'em.


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
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