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Yahoo Treading Carefully Before Exposing More Private Data
crimeandpunishment writes "Yahoo hopes to turn on a new sharing option without turning off its users. The company is trying to avoid the privacy backlash that has befallen Facebook and Google. It's advising its email account holders, all 280M of them, to review their privacy settings in advance of Yahoo's new features that will share users' online activities and interests with people in their address books, unless they take steps to prevent it."
I was a long-time OpenBSD user since the 3.1 days, and cut my teeth on Unix development there. I was attracted by its focus on security and conscientious coding practices. I was happy through the early 4.x days, but the more I got involved in developing for OpenBSD the more I was dissuaded from doing so.
Part of the issue was this focus on security. After I began to use OpenBSD at home and at work in earnest, I realized that it was limited in hardware support compared to other operating systems. I purchased a new workstation and portable within a year of each other, and both times came to some unhappy realizations about OpenBSD support.
I began to seriously look at Linux and FreeBSD at this point, knowing hardware support was much more robust. (I had also looked at NetBSD, but even though it booted on nearly everything, driver support was anemic.) I started to dual-boot FreeBSD on my workstation, and spent more and more time there. But it wasn't only hardware support that pushed me away from OpenBSD.
The FreeBSD development model is, to say the least, more sensible. Like I said, the more I got involved with OpenBSD development the more I was turned away, and that was mostly due to the project leader's attitude. During the run-up to OpenBSD 4.2, Theo de Raadt had been in a couple highly-publicized arguments with Linux developers, rubbing a ton of people the wrong way.
What many don't understand is that this was not an isolated incident. Try being an OpenBSD developer! These kind of scathing verbal assaults happened all of the time on the mailing lists. I wasand still am, actuallyunsure whether Theo doesn't give a shit due to some philosophical stance, or can't help it due to something like Asperger syndrome. In either case, he typically drags anyone he disagrees with over the coals, all while telling them to stop taking it personally.
I wish Theo had taken some of his own advice. I believe he has hurt the OpenBSD platform more than he has helped it, and I also firmly believe that hardware support in OpenBSD sucks not because of code auditing practices or security focus, but because Theo has either scared or purposefully chased away developers.
Long-time OpenBSD developers might migrate to FreeBSD or Darwin; newbies might try for Linux instead. Those who taste the de Raadt wrath, however, always run in the end. One time, a friend of mine incurred his ire by asking the wrong question at the wrong time, and Theo de Raadt hacked his router and remotely remapped his keyboard!
This is abuse, plain and simple, and Theo's relationship with his developers is abusive. I feel bad for anyone who has to engage him in real life, and fear something Reiser-like happening in the future. This controlling, manipulative attitude coupled with periodic violent outbursts indicates a deep-seated mental health issue that has gone unchecked for far too long. If you are an OpenBSD developer, watch your back!
After all this mess, I switched to FreeBSD 7.2 and never looked back. I upgraded to FreeBSD 7.3 and started using FreeBSD 8 as soon as it was in pre-release, and I am eagerly working on FreeBSD 8.1. I feel spoiled now, too, because of the throng of developers devoted to professionally working the FreeBSD platform into something spectacular instead of naggling over trivial matters or admonishing one another.
The thriving FreeBSD ecosystem contrasts sharply with the Jonestown-like atmosphere of OpenBSD. There is also the fact that no one person looms so largely over any other; ego is checked at the door in FreeBSD since the goal is to make a great operating system, not lord over others like David Karesh and a harem of 14-year-old girls.
Feel free to disagree with me or point out counter-examples; I would love to read them now that I have left OpenBSD. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the little secure operating system even though it leaves me with chills. I sometimes fondly load www.openbsd.org and read the latest release notes and smile wistfully.
It's okay to smile, now that I'm free from OpenBSD.
STOP IT WITH THE GODDAMNED "WE'RE GONNA SHARE YOUR ONLINE LIFE" bullshit!
Seriously. DO NOT WANT.
Yeah, great, you can "opt out". How about just don't fucking do it in the first place, Yahoo!?
Christ riding a sheep, this is retarded.
Sent from your iPad.
The right way to do it is to leave it off by default. Assuming your primary concern is to protect users' privacy. Which it isn't: they mainly want to bring this new feature (whatever it is) to the majority of people whom they think will like it, without upsetting a (vocal) minority of users who really care about privacy.
Qxe4
Yahoo's new features that will share users' online activities and interests with people in their address books
So you can do a lot of things on Yahoo! like play chess, manage finances or e-mail. But what level of detail is going to be shared and for what possible reason?
Let's take the most basic possibility -- similar to XBox Live -- where it says eldavojohn is playing Futurama. You only ever get a few pieces of data: my name, I'm online and my activity. But it doesn't popup with "eldavojohn has died" or "eldavojohn has reached achievement X." The specifics are hidden resulting in this only facilitating friends noticing they're online and playing together. Might work with Yahoo! Chess but it I can't see it working for finances or e-mail. "Hey, eldavojohn's online, let's read up on some mutual funds together!" Or, "eldavojohn's e-mailing, I should e-mail with him!" Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This only sense this makes is if you're one of those "microbloggers" that likes to inform everyone what you're eating and when you're urinating because you have some weird infatuation with yourself.
The most extreme possibility is far worse. What if you knew who I was playing chess with, what stocks I was buying and who I was e-mailing. If this is the case then Yahoo! could be poised to overtake Facebook as the number one source of evidence in divorce proceedings. I think anyone would agree that this extreme is highly undesirable.
So I don't get it. Yahoo! is trying to build a better service by switching this on? How are they planning to do this? The cynic in me is defaulting to some sort of money related advertising scheme whereby you say surely whatever you share with your friends can be shared with an advertiser. There is some money in that. Is that already baked into this privacy statement or will that be done behind your back or will that be a future "feature"?
My work here is dung.
Why is this even needed? Seriously can anyone name a single benefit for the end user? No one cares what blogs you read, what sites you visit, etc. if someone really cared they'd just ask you.
This is a huge privacy risk and annoyance for no benefit
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This is reminiscent of the "negative billing" scams, whee if you don't opt out, you're automatically going to be subscribed for $EXTRA_CRAP_SERVICE_I_DONT_WANT at $X_MORE_PER_MONTH.
Seriously, Yahoo, sharing is not always a 'Good Thing' Some things are better kept private
She's interested in: hot black men and real estate. In Oakland, CA. I'm none of those things, so it's no skin off my nose. But it still provides me with some entertainment every now and again.
Instead of it being "Yahoo's new features that will share users' online activities and interests with people in their address books, unless they take steps to prevent it.", how about they make it "Yahoo's new features that will share users' online activities and interests with people in their address books, if they take steps to enable it."? Problem solved.
Unless, of course, the problem is that Yahoo wants to do something it knows the majority of it's users don't want done, in which case I still think it's "Problem solved.", it's just not a solution Yahoo likes. But it isn't Yahoo's information Yahoo wants to share, so I don't see why what Yahoo likes should figure into it.
I just jizzed in my own face. It was awesome!
-Gary Niger
"We're going to fuck all of our users in the ass. But we want to make sure OUR asses are covered, legally speaking. So we are going to warn our users that we are going to fuck them in the ass. But we aren't going to go out of our way to warn them, because then they might not let us fuck them in the ass. We're going to secretly warn them, and then our lawyers have informed us that we can fuck our users in the ass until they ask us to stop. And then confirm that they want to stop the ass-fucking by clicking on a link in an e-mail that they will receive within a few hours, during which they will still be getting fucking in the ass."
-Yahoo! is a leading online provider of ass-fucking. http://www.yahoo.com/
Exactly. It's not like Facebook, where there are privacy setting which are getting shifted (and hence there will be a mapping, at least somewhat flawed in the best cases). This is new, so just start with everything turned off. If people want to be social, they can decide how "social" they want their information to be.
Me? I don't use Yahoo, and I no longer hire anyone who uses Yahoo. Yes, "What is your favorite search engine" is actually one of my hiring questions. Yahoo employees are batting zero.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Yes, just like with software upgrades; if you add new features, have the default to making the software as close as it was before they were added. All the current users of Yahoo are adjusted to the current settings they've made. If they add a new feature that shares more data, it should be off by default for current users, otherwise you'd break "compatibility" with them. But then the users might not "benefit" from the new feature, so marketing wants it on by default. I imagine that's the reason they default wrong.
Hey, they can call it Yahoo Buzz!
Oh wait...
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
We need a general legal prohibition against implicit consent. We need to legislate that any contract provision which allows one party to modify the terms of the contract without the explicit consent of the other party is null and void. Consent cannot be given merely by continuing to use the service or pay for it. If companies want to change terms, they should have to get explicit consent, given as a transaction separate from ordinary use of the product or service. This should be an FTC rule.
The effect is that when a company changes something, some of the customers are going to move to a competitor. That's in line with the basic principles of capitalism.
I deleted my yahoo account after 12 years. That's just shady and dumb. I want to opt-in not forced to opt-out.
The one step easy solution to any of this "user backlash" is to make any new features "opt in" not "opt out".
The only reason to do it as they are (opt out) is to make data accessable that users don't want to keep private. I haven't logged into my yahoo account in months, due to having forgotten my password. This means that when this change comes around, information will be made available about me that I cannot prevent and that, when I signed up, was assured would be kept private.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
I got two yahoo accounts, and haven't received one of these "privacy minders" in either one. Maybe its because I insist on using their classic email interface instead of the web 2.0 mess?
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Alternatively, Yahoo could have advertised themselves as an alternative to the information-sharing sites like Facebook, Google, etc. However, since they didn't, they must have figured they still have a net gain even after the backlash.
That said, I have already deleted my contacts.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
They could easily avoid the whole issue by having the new feature default to "off" rather than forcing users to explicitly opt-out of sharing.
I hate the fact that opt-out is even legal, let alone has apparently become standard acceptable practice. Anyone entrusted with your private data should not be legally able to suddenly make it publicly available without your express permission.
Companies doing this should be deemed automatically liable for all damages and costs when they arbitrarily decide to leak private info, even if they do provide an opt-out.
I've taken the liberty of removing all my personal contact info from my yahoo account since reading about this. I also contacted them to leave privacy policy feedback, and explained why they have now earned my disdain.
Please don't forget you can give them feedback.
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/privacy/cgi_feedback?radio30=radio305
There is just one problem with this plan. It still ends with Yahoo exposing more private data.
I wonder how many people bother reading privacy statements anyway, I know I don't.
Just assume fiddling with setting is futile, and whatever information you put online can never be removed and will eventually be shared with the rest of the world.
This especially goes for free sites, since they're making money from advertising, they'll make more money from better targeted advertising, and the main reason all your contacts get to see your info is because "we're sharing your information with everybody" sounds just a bit better than "we're only sharing your information with everybody willing to pay for it".
**TODO** [X] Steal someone elses sig.
I use yahoo to host my spam e-mail and my personal domain e-mail. This worries me, as i have many many customers on my address book but the last thing i need is joe bob from northern missouri knowing when im online. I was thinking of switching to gmail to use with my new evo i get tomorrow, but can they host my domain?
Yahoo was the one company that I actually perceived as not raping my privacy at every turn. It's very disappointing to see them jump on this bandwagon.
They clearly simply *do not get it*. The number one problem with the changes that google and facebook made was that they opted you in. It wasn't about warnings, information, etc. People who were interested could always find out the information. They didn't actually hide what they were doing. The problem was that they opted you in. Or where they presented a UI for choosing the defaults were opted in. Now Yahoo decides to do exactly the same thing.
If they really do this then I may well delete my Yahoo mail account which I've kept now for 15 years.
So I've long since abandoned my yahoo email address. I can't even remember my password. Does this mean that they will assume that whatever emails I still get there (all spam) are my "interests" and they will inform everyone in my address book of them?
I can't wait until my exgirlfriends try to contact me to discuss my interest in penis enlargement devices and nigerian princes.
downward spiral#.v In
Yahoo is actually informing their users of what will happen, before it happens and yahoo is giving their users the chance to opt out before it happens. Imagine that.
This is called common courtesy.
It isn't new.
From what I have read about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he is literally an immature person, being unaware of the importance of such niceties. He is learning it now, in some stressful ways.
My intuition about Google Buzz was that the people who made the decision were similarly immature as Zuckerberg is, not understanding the effects their decision would have. To their credit, they did not make the same public statements Zuckerberg has made, making them look far less arrogant and immature than Zuckerberg. Google, once having learned how their decision was received smartly did a quick 180. Zuckerberg is still trying to push his agenda.
On the upside Zuckerberg is doing a public service by setting himself up as a lightening rod. His spectacle is giving people like him in the IT industry a free education.
Maybe the people at Yahoo are just as bad, but at a minimum it seems they are smart enough to have looked at his spectacle and learned from it.
Anyone notice there isn't any anger at Twitter?
I think that is because Twitter STARTED of 100% open and everyone signed up for Twitter with that in mind.
People signed up for Gmail and Yahoo with the expectation of private communication. People signed up for Facebook with the expectation of semi-private and controlled information.
People don't like the rules having changed on them mid-game.
At least Yahoo is not starting off with a shoot first and ask if it hurts policy.
If I was Yahoo or a similar private service wanting to go public, I would make the social media features a completely separate service and release utilities for users to move their information, for themselves afterward, by their choice.
It creeps people out to have their private stuff moved around FOR THEM.
I'm glad I read this thread. I just deleted my yahoo address book and my old sent emails.
I've had that yahoo account for over 10 years so I am not going to get rid of it. I still use it, but my main email is gmail. I can get by without those stored addresses.
I don't want the cleaning lady I emailed 3 years ago knowing that I like to read slashdot while wearing pink panties.